


Through an Endless Diamond Sky

by FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Cuz that's my tea, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Stephen Strange, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Stephen Strange, Inspired by Aladdin (1992), M/M, Obe and Kae battle for the position of Jafar, Other, Peter as Abu, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Stephen Strange, Protective Tony Stark, Staring Stephen as Aladdin, Stephen Strange is Actually the Greatest, These two idiots love each other fight me, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange parenting Peter Parker | Supremefamily | Strange Family, Tony as an actually useful Jasmine with a personality who's existence contributes to the plot, Yeah this grew legs, You know who the cloak is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2019-11-07 15:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17962916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls/pseuds/FriendlyNeighborhoodFangirls
Summary: When the wind's from the east, it finds the marketplace where a thief with bandaged hands makes his living.When the sun's from the west, it blinds a prince with tired eyes where he stands in the highest window of the palace.When the sand in the glass is right, a vizier fights the dunes of the desert to where a cave, a Cave of Wonders, holds a promise of magic most malevolent.On another Arabian night, a sorcerer pulls the strings of fate to reach his own ends.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I still can't write short things???? So you get a multi-chap Aladdin AU because I have no self control?
> 
> If anyone objects, my apologies. 
> 
> Somehow I don't think anyone objects.
> 
> Anyway, I don't own anything or anyone, and I love them enough to never misuse their legalities. Enough chatter; enjoy!

The scalding desert sun baked the sweat off Stephen’s neck like it baked the clay of the bricks against his back. Heat spread the scent of rot and stale urine through the alley, fought off by the aroma of bread where it met the marketplace. All Stephen had as defense around his sunburned shoulders was a ragged vest, once blue, but now bleached of all pigment by the unforgiving sun. It bleached everything of color, of motivation, of energy.

Well, hopefully of energy. 

It’d make this far easier. 

Lingering against the edge of the wall and trying to look as drunk as possible, Stephen peered unblinkingly at the nearest market stand. He forced himself to ignore the heat of the bricks as he slumped against them. The street wasn’t much better. Listening to the sound of sales and soliciting, of bargaining and negotiating, Stephen waited for chaos.

He wasn’t disappointed. 

He couldn’t seen Peter’s graceful, cobra-swift movements, but he saw the reactions, the shouts in the crowd and furrows of people making way for something unnoticed. Grinning, he surged from the alley to cut through the crowd of market-goers before him. 

Peter appeared next to him moments later, breathing hard and clutching a still-steaming loaf in his grimy hand. The boy grinned at Stephen as they darted through the street to gain ground. 

Not fast enough. 

“Stop, thief!” 

“They really think that’s going to work,” Stephen muttered, shaking his head as the two of them veered away from the market and into a side street. “Every time, they think that’s going to do anything but alert us of their approach?”

“Guards are stupid,” Peter panted. 

“Maybe, but--”

“Don’t rely on it,” Peter finished for him, waving a hand. “I know, I know.”

“Don’t dismiss my lessons!” Stephen reprimanded, but he was grinning. “They’re the only reason you’re still alive.”

“For which I am  _ eternally _ grateful,” Peter said. “Now shut up and run.”

They broke through the street into a wider area, pausing for a moment to gulp in the open air. This street was less crowded; populated only by the clotheslines strung between the windows, a small crowd around a sword-swallower, and a group of women conversing around an open door. Stephen took a step into the street, only to be met with the echo of hostile voices. 

“You two, over that way. And you two, with me; we’ll find them.”

Stephen lept forward, pulling two draping shawls off the hanging clotheslines. He threw one to Peter and wrapped the other around his head and shoulders. “Go,” he hissed. “Over there, go go go.”

Peter scurried to the edge of the group of women, and Stephen followed, the two boys adhering to the edge of the clan. 

Peter grinned at the confused women, his boyish smile instantly friendly. “Morning, ladies.”

“Getting into trouble a little early?” one of them asked with a smile, and Stephen shrugged. 

“Trouble? It’s only trouble if you get caught--”

A hand gripped the side of his impromptu shawl, ripping it away and whirling him to face the beefy chest of one of the city guardsmen. Hands secured on the collar of his vest lifted him nearly off the ground.

“I’m in trouble!” Stephen gripped at the wrists weakly, the fabric of his bandages rubbing against his skin. 

“Gotcha,” the man snarled. “And this time--”

Stephen stumbled back to earth as nimble hands roughly pulled his attacker’s turban down over his eyes. Peter darted from behind the man, catching the bread he’d tucked between his neck and shoulder and taking Stephen’s wrist.

“Perfect timing, as usual,” Stephen said.

Peter saluted, though neither slowed. As the sounds of their pursuers grew more irate, Stephen took the lead again, ducking towards the sun. The unfinished building (Stephen wasn’t sure what it was going to be) he’d chosen as their getaway loomed to the left, and they swerved in its direction. 

“You first, Pete,” Stephen said as the planks of the side scaffold came into view. He held out his hand for the bread. Peter grinned, and kept a hold of it, sprinting the last few meters to the wooden supports. 

Then he  _ lept.  _

His bare toes curling into the grooves of the newly calked wall, Peter scaled almost a story without pause, both hands held behind him for balance. He reached the first plank of the scaffold and whipped out a single hand to curl around the beam. His momentum carried him up and over it, and Peter landed gracefully atop the first beam. 

“Impressive, as ever,” Stephen said, coming up beneath the kid. 

“Thank you.” Peter leaned down to offer Stephen his free hand. Stephen took it--well, he slid his wrist into it, and used Peter as a fulcrum to haul himself up and over the first beam. It was halting and awkward, but he made it, and Peter only looked a little bit smug. 

Stephen leaned against one of the support beams to let Peter catch his breath. The sand coating the wood grains pressed into his shoulders, and he listened to the weary voices of the people above who climbed wearily through the ladders with their backs bent by clay and bricks. Stephen cast his eyes over the street, taking in the paths of the searching guardsmen. 

“Oh, damn,” he muttered as one met his eye and pointed. “Couldn’t give the boy time to rest?” Turning back to Peter, he asked, “ready?”

“What, you tired?”

Stephen grinned, then took off across the thin wood, leaping between support beams as quickly as he could manage. The half-built wall stretched up before them, the clay between the bricks growing progressively softer with increasing height and newness. 

He hooked his wrists around the beam above them and hoisted himself over it. Peter vaulted up next to him, still holding the loaf, and Stephen shook out his wrists before climbing one more story of the scaffold. He squared himself to the wall, searching the bricks for the one he’d prepared. 

“Moment of truth,” Stephen muttered, reaching out toward the wall.

“I thought you already--”

“I cut the clay, already, but it has the weight of a building distributed over it,” Stephen explained. “We’re relying on the fact that the this place is up to Stark standards of construction.”

Peter hummed, and Stephen centered his bandaged hands against a stone block. A tiny crack was visible in the clay around it, left over from the movements of his spade earlier that morning. He held his breath, and pushed. 

The brick shifted. 

Stephen grinned, pushing harder. The wet clay around it  _ should  _ lubricate the brick enough that it--

Peter added his significant strength to the wall, and their stone block went sliding out of its place and onto the half-built wooden floor beneath it. It was the perfect point; newly laid enough to still be wet, but close enough to a temporary floor that its weight wouldn’t send it plummeting to the market below. 

When no crash echoed through the street, and Peter let out a quiet, satisfied whoop. Stephen slipped through the hole, peeking carefully into the inside of the half-complete building. 

“Uh, Stephen…”

Peter’s voice held a bit of urgency, and Stephen figured he should get on with it. He pushed his long body through the gap, and Peter followed, setting the bread carefully to the side. The two of them squared off before their brick.

“Three, two, one,” Stephen muttered, and secured his hands around one corner of the oblong block. Pain tingled through his fingers, but the two boys’ combined strength had the brick sliding back into place. Stephen lifted his hands from the wall, waiting. 

It stayed. 

Stephen spun, triumphant, and slumped down against the wall as he blew out a breath. “You still got it?”

“Of course I’ve got it! I’m not about to lose breakfast. Especially when they want your head for it,” replied Peter, wafting the scent of bread beneath his nose. He joined Stephen against the wall, pressing himself close so they made a small a target as possible.

“They don’t want my head for it, they want my hands,” Stephen corrected. He looked down at where the scarred things gripped each other weakly, hidden in the folds of his ancient, dirty bandages. “Don’t know why. The dumb things are useless, anyway.”

“Not useless, they stole us dinner, didn’t they?” Peter’s hand fell atop his shoulder, and Stephen glanced sideways at the boy.

“Last I checked, that was you.”  
“You put all this together.” Peter waved his hands at the quiet interior of the building. “When’s the last time we ate without the guard on our tail?”

“Can’t remember,” Stephen admitted. “So break the bread, why don’t you?”

“Yes, sir!” Peter laughed, pulling the loaf in half. 

Their bread tasted of sand and salt and success.

* * *

 

Tony propped his chin up in his palm and tried to look like he wasn’t falling asleep in his rice. 

Keyword ‘tried.’

“Anthony Stark, are you even listening to me?”

Tony jumped, and the grains exploded from his fingers. Cursing, he tried to gather it atop a piece of flatbread, pointedly  _ not  _ looking at the seat across the table where Obadiah was glowering at him. 

“Anthony…”

“I’m listening,” Tony protested, pressure building in his throat as he tried to hold in a yawn. 

“You’d better be. You’re father’s expecting you to be ready for tonight.”

Tony rubbed his shoulder. “Sure, sure,” he said. Then paused. “... tonight?”

Obadiah’s long, long sigh echoed through the room. Tony glanced toward him, watching the man rub his face with both hands. It didn’t last; Tony’s attention drifted to the open window behind him, the delicate curtains waving slowly in a breeze he couldn’t feel. 

He could see the city, just barely, above the gate. Flat-topped buildings, dull and shining in the sun-bleached horizon, cast geometric shadows across each other. A few sported chipped paint. A few more waved cheerful shutters, and Tony imagined them clattering, adding their wooden voices to the whistle of the wind. He could see silhouettes moving in the illuminated windows. He could see silhouettes unmoving against the sky. 

“Anthony…  _ ANTHONY!” _

Tony jumped again, more rice jumping from the table. “Sorry, Obe,” he said, genuinely this time. “I didn’t… sleep…”

“Well? Yeah, no kidding.”

_ At all.  _

Residual pain stung Tony’s shoulders and wrists, and he stayed forcefully motionless. It was understandably hard to sleep curled up against a hot clay wall because he’d been evicted from his bedroom. 

“Enlighten me about tonight, then,” Tony said, leaning back against the back of the chair and crossing his legs. 

“There’s another suitor coming--”

Tony cut him off. “Why am I not surprised? I thought it was going to be something  _ important.” _

“You’re father--”

“Don’t bring him into this--”

“He’s the whole reason  _ we _ are in this!”

Tony glowered. “If he wants to get rid of me so badly, why can’t I just  _ leave?  _ I’d go  _ far away  _ and you’d never have to  _ deal with my bullshit  _ ever again.” 

“You know damn well why,” Obadiah sighed. “And this  _ is  _ important, not just because of what the Sultan’s ordered.”

“Company ties,” Tony muttered, slumping back over his rice.

Obadiah nodded. “You are the royal blood.”

That’s all he was. All he’d ever been.  _ Company ties.  _ Another jewel in the treasury, pretty and clever and nothing but a bargaining chip. A prize to win, an olive branch to tie two countries together. Royal fucking blood. 

And Tony could tolerate his father on most things. He could sit with his shoulders square and a smirk on his lips and take the words and the blows and agree, and show nothing. Just like the Sultan wanted. 

But not for this. Tony was not  _ royal blood.  _

He was more than that. 

He  _ had  _ to be more than that.

“Who is it this time?” Tony wondered. 

“The Pala Empire,” Obadiah replied. “To the West.”

Tony didn’t bother to ask for a name. The coming prince or princess likely didn’t know his, either. And they wouldn’t meet; not until a day or two of preparation from the Sultan. 

And Tony had never allowed those days to pass. This one was no different. 

Diagrams were already forming in his mind, connecting lines to ellipses and means to ends. Obadiah had said ‘tonight’, so he had the chaos of dinner to work within, and if he could re-purpose his last device so it wasn’t too obvious… 

“Thank you,” Tony said, standing suddenly. His chair screeched against the beautiful tiles of the palace floor as Tony whipped into motion, striding toward the nearest exit. 

“We aren’t finished--”

“Yes we are!” Tony called back. “Besides, I have to get ready for tonight!” 

Obadiah roared another order, but the twisting hallways had already swallowed Tony up, drawing him into the bowels of the palace. Out of view, now, Tony sped up. His feet pounded with an ever-increasing rhythm on the mosaic tile of the corridors, and he raised his hands to pull at the wrap around his forehead, letting it fall around his neck. His short brown hair stuck up every-which-way with static as the lamps of the hall glinted off the golden embroidery of his robes, which now came undone with his careless movement. 

When he reached his haven, his sanctuary, his home, he looked no more like a prince than Obadiah’s personal servant. Slipping the door shut behind him, Tony breathed the slightly pungent smell of fish oil and wood. 

“Hey,” he said into the cluttered space. Untying his robes the rest of the way, Tony hung the pristine things on the hook over the door and ambled through his workshop. 

An answering meow caught his ear, and Tony changed his trajectory toward the curtained window. “Good to see you too, Dummy,” he said, reaching out to stroke the mau’s ears. 

Dummy purred, settling back down to stare out the top-story window with his tail wrapped about his paws. Tony joined him, for a moment. The view was the reason he’d chosen this room, just a toddler finding refuge from his father, and it was no less comforting now. High in the dome of one of the palace’s towers, Tony’s small, round workshop had an angle to see out over the gate. 

He’d never touched those streets, but at least here he could see them. 

“I’ve got to get some chaos wrangled up,” he said to Dummy. “Where’d I put the last device?”

Dummy mewed, flicking his tail. Trusting the cat’s judgment (he was half convinced the mau truly was godsent, despite his name), Tony made his way in that direction and began to rifle through the bits and pieces scattered around his workshop. He scattered wooden buttons-turned-wheels and charcoal pencils wrapped around bits of twine and tried to avoid cutting himself on the painstakingly sharpened stones he’d accumulated from the palace courtyards and gardens. Not exactly modern tools, but Tony made due with what he had. 

The Sultan didn’t approve of his son’s  _ ‘tricks’.  _

Tony rubbed his shoulder. 

“When I get out of here,” he said to Dummy, “I’m going to buy all the fireworks the Chinese can produce.” He shook his head, smiling a bit. “Think of everything we could do.”

The cat meowed. 

“Exactly my thoughts,” Tony said, and went back to searching. After all, the hours were ticking by, and he had a party to crash. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

It was the music that drew Stephen and Peter to the procession.

Stephen heard the drumbeat, first, pounding up through the bottom of his feet. He paused, lifting a hand to silence the chattering boy beside him. Straining over the sound of the Agrabah streets, Stephen thought he could make out trumpets, harps, _music._

“C’mon, Pete!” he said, speeding up. The sounds grew clearer the closer they moved, weaving like shadows through the allies of the city. They weren’t the only ones; the wide road to to palace gate was lined with curious citizens. Stephen led the way through the crowd.

For a moment, he was satisfied to simply listen, swaying slightly to the notes pooling in the grooves of his skin. It didn’t take long for him to realize the beat was less drumming and more the familiar sound of metal on metal as fencers danced before the scores of musicians in formation. Stephen’s bandaged hands twitched as they remembered the looseness of the wrist and the grip of the hilt.

Even after all this time, he still remembered.

“What’s going on?” Stephen murmured finally, taking in the makers of the music: their elegant dress, their groomed steeds, their general existence.

Peter shrugged. “They’re probably on their way to the palace.”

“Escorting someone?”

The man next to Stephen nodded. “Some royal seeking the prince’s hand.”

Stephen frowned, craning his neck back toward the passing parade. “Another one?”

“They say he keeps driving them away,” the man answered.

“Good for him,” Stephen muttered. “From the looks of… _that—”_ he gestured to the group of uptight performers— “these guys are more wealth than worth.”

The confused individual next to him didn’t say anything else, and Stephen trotted after the fighters. Peter followed on his heels, and the two of them ducked through the people to keep up with the fencers. Stephen found his steps turning to skips, to glides. The movements of his hands turned to gestures, and he joined the battle with a rapier made of memory.

“Stephen,” Peter said quietly, and Stephen realized he was being watched. He dropped his hands.  

“You used to fight?” Peter asked, though neither of them slowed their path through the people.

“I did a lot of things,” Stephen replied flatly.

Peter might have pursued the subject had the broken cobbles of the street not tripped some unlucky trumpeter, causing an ugly screech through the music. Stephen cringed, his eyes following the break in formation of the musicians upon the poor man’s stumble. Peter was already moving.

Stephen’s extended hand did nothing to halt the boy as he dashed into the ranks of the wealthy, extending his dirty hands and carefully helping the fallen trumpeter to his feet. He did it on instinct, he did everything on instinct, and that instinct was always to help.

But that was not at all what it looked like.

“Peter!” Stephen roared, rushing forward himself as the royals spun in on the pickpocket, the orphan in their midst. The small boy disappeared behind a wall of white and gold robes, behind the gleam of trumpets and lutes and music, no longer so inviting.

Stephen forgot agility and the skill of a thief, resorting to shoving at the bodies obstructing his path. His stained bandages left soiled streaks on the perfect robes, his weak hands pulling at shoulders and wrists. The path was almost violent, but Stephen would risk what was happening out of his view, and cared not for the force he used.

He was glad of it.

Breaking through the wall only moments before the first blow fell, Stephen gripped Peter’s wrist, hauling him to his feet. “Pompous idiots,” he hissed to the ring of now-irate musicians. “If I was as rich as you, I could afford some common sense; he was trying to help!”

“Dirty thieves,” the musician hissed. “I don’t know what they tolerate on these streets, but—”

Stephen didn’t stick around to hear the tail end of the taunt. Still clutching Peter as securely as his weak hands could manage, he hauled ass toward the edge of the street. But he couldn’t help but notice the blemishes they left on these perfect people at every point of question, every golden thread they turned brown, every shining instrument they smudged.

No one tried to stop them as they fled back into the crowd. In the vastness of the performance, their disturbance likely hadn’t even been noticed. They hadn’t been noticed.

The trumpets found their notes again, falling back into the song as though nothing had happened. As though two little nothings had happened.

Stephen looked down at his wrapped hands, and thought he could see their tremble.

“Come on, Pete,” he sighed. “Let’s go home.”

  


Peter stayed behind him as they traveled back to their makeshift shelter. Unusual; the climb was long and intricate and Peter loved challenging himself to find ways to get home along the ratpath, the highway of thieves through the roofs of Agrabah. But that night, he followed Stephen in silence.

Stephen could feel the boy’s calculating eyes on his back as he climbed, but didn’t comment. He wasn’t about to prompt Peter’s useless prying.

When they lept the final gaps and swung the final rooftops to their home, darkness had come in sheets. It lifted the scorching of the sun and left warm wind behind, and Stephen let himself relax and close his eyes slightly as they stepped through the curtained entrance.

He heard Peter yawn, and looked toward the kid. Peter gave him a light smile before making his way to the stair-step cot he’d fashioned himself all those years ago. Stephen watched expressionlessly as Peter went through the motions of slipping into bed, the boy already asleep behind his eyes.

They wouldn’t be speaking tonight.

But it was companionable silence, an accepting silence, as Stephen perched on the ledge that opened over the city and Peter curled into sleep.

Pulling their ragged curtain aside, Stephen let the moonlight reflecting off the shining domes of the palace blind him for a moment. A sprinkle of stars wreathed the sprawling building, as though someone had pulled the windows from its towers and thrown them up through the sky. Copper and white contrasted navy blackness and shadow. Stephen swung his legs out over the ledge, caring nothing for the potential fall, and drank up the scene as he did every night.

The wind pulled his ragged hair into his face when he eventually turned his attention to his hands. Slowly, painfully, he brought imprecise fingers to the knot of the first bandage and began to rip at it. Bits of canvas came away beneath his fingernails. The wrappings weren’t that tight—he couldn’t stand much pressure—and as they came away, his fingers stretched thankfully toward the cooler air.

Stephen let the used bandages flutter away, releasing them to the wind. Sand was already pooling in the grooves of his twisted fingers, already coating his scars, and he flexed his hands slowly, one at a time.

“Someday,” he said quietly, staring toward the palace.

He didn’t finish the statement. He hoped the stars could hear, anyway.

* * *

 

He really despised these new curtains.

The old ones had been so much more _convenient._ And really, what had been wrong with them? Nothing, that was what, and they’d been transparent, too.

Assuming you pressed your face close from directly behind them as you crouched in the servants balcony above the dining room.

Which Tony did, often.

But now he had to pull the curtains away to get any view of the goings-on down below, exposing his face to anyone who happened to look up. Not that anyone usually did, but _usually_ was still an anxiety-inducing probability, and Tony’s stance was spring-loaded.

People were filing into the dining room, courtiers and advisers, Obadiah and Kaecilius. Tony assumed the gorgeous woman at the foot of the table was his most recent suitor, and pointedly ignored her existence.

She likely didn’t deserve it. She likely didn’t deserve any of this, was likely just as choiceless in the matter as he was.

So he was giving her a choice. And he was buying himself time.

Tony tapped his fingers on the wall beside him, opening the curtains a bit wider. He could smell the feast, lamb-stuffed wheat wraps overpowering everything else, and tried not to drool. They were his favorite. Then kitchen slaves would probably be irritated at him for all the ones he snuck from stores and plates if they weren’t so terrified.

They didn’t understand that he was just as scared.

When Tony’s father entered the hall, it was as though all air and light and conversation had been sucked into him. The Sultan wrapped everything in his palm and closed his fist around it, and the inhabitants of the hall rose as one to bow in respect there was no choice but to have. Even Tony, hidden in the servant’s balcony, inclined his head.

His heart climbed into his throat and then into his mouth as his father passed into the angle of his vision; one glance upward, and Tony would be done for.

Swallowing hard, Tony rubbed his shoulder.

He couldn’t close the curtain, though; he needed to assure that this worked.

“Be seated,” the Sultan said, and the scrap of chairs echoed around the hall. Tony held his breath, not tearing his focus from his father as the bent servants pulled out his chair…

And the Sultan sat.

The weight on a leg of the chair splintered a weakened wood grain, shifting the distributed weight onto the curl of twine Tony had placed so carefully not an hour before and stretching it taunt. Beneath the table, a makeshift trebuchet released its load.

As the launched pebbles found their marks, Tony’s engineered chaos exploded.

First, the collapse of the princess’s throne, which usually belonged to Tony himself—he’d whittled at the construction until the proper application of force could reduce it to pieces. Next, the crack of ceramic as a stone tipped the wine pitcher over everything else. Liquid splashed onto ceremonial garb and dress attire, seeping to the skin underneath. And of course, Tony hadn’t been able to resist a snake.

In his defense, it was a small one, and nonvenomous at that. But it still induced a number of unbelievably satisfying shrieks, and Tony grinned.

Until he turned his gaze, and locked eyes with Howard Stark.

Tony’s world froze.

There was nothing but indifferent irritation in the gaze of his father. The Sultan had seen an obstacle, and obstacles must be removed.

Tony wanted to look away, wanted to run like hell while he still could. But his father’s eyes kept him petrified, hypnotized, like a trained beast upon seeing the whip.

The Sultan got up.

Slowly.

He got up, and he left the room, ignoring the chaos.

It took less than two minute to get to the balcony from the hall.

And Tony was running, resigned terror clutching his throat, for the exit. The single exit, the solitary entrance. Tony watched his feet as he ran, unable to look up.

It took more than a minute to reach the exit to the hall from the balcony. The single exit. The solitary entrance.

His father’s hand closed around his collar as he tried to pass.

“We’ve spoken of your _tricks_ before,” his soft voice said.

Tony tried not to tremble beneath that tone, but he couldn’t stop his cringe, his instinctual curling in around his chest and stomach.

He kept silent.

And he kept silent after, when he curled on the rough stone floor and spat out copper.

Because Agrabah princes were hard as diamond.

* * *

 

“Kae… it’s…”

“Indescribably beautiful? A perfect totem of your dream, a completion of your quest?”

Obadiah Stane scoffed, both irritated and amused, and carefully slid off of his horse, patting its black coat as he went. But he had eyes only for the looming mouth of the cave before him—no, _the_ Cave. His years of searching, of scheming and manipulating and scraping, all culminated in the roaring lion’s head of sand that reared like a surfacing beast from the sandy desert.

“Yes,” he replied. “Kaecilius, even with your questionable fashion sense—” _and the fact that you are completely insufferable—_ “you have delivered. One thousand times.”

The young man shrugged, smirking slightly. “Well, it wasn’t like you could do it without me.”

Indeed. The Cave was hidden to all those it didn’t choose to share its history with, to allow a part of its energy within themselves. The part that Obadiah sought, a kernel of magic to burst into power akin to that Kaecilius could wield.

Obadiah sighed. “And it wasn’t like you were doing it out of the kindness of your heart.”

Kaecilius laughed, sharp and mirthless. “No, I was not. So if you would?”

“You’ll get your compensation,” Obadiah assured. He traced the layers of the dunes as his feet brought him toward the Cave, the cinnamon taste of power already coating his tongue and mind. Finally, _finally,_ the magic was here, was within reach.

And then Kaecilius sighed, and his hand closed around Obadiah’s upper arm. “Wait a moment,” the sorcerer said.

“Now? When I’m meters away?” Obadiah demanded.

“Well, by all means, go in. Assuming you want the curse to destroy your possibilities before they could even begin.”

Obadiah froze. “What.”

Kaecilius didn’t even have the decency to look repentant as Obadiah turned slowly, furiously toward him. “Still eager?”

“What haven’t you told me, _Kae?_ ” Obadiah snarled.

Nothing regretful, nothing fearful crossed the young man’s face; in fact, he looked somewhat pleased with himself as he shrugged. “A few things. Y’know, that you’re completely disillusioned and going to end up killing yourself and all passage to power.”

It was the satisfaction, the _indifference_ that had Obadiah lunging, wrapping powerful hands around Kaecilius’s throat.

“Tell. Me. Now,” he snarled.

Kaecilius raised an eyebrow at him, even as he struggled to draw breath. “You might… not want… to be doing that…” he choked out.

Moments before the sorcerer’s skin ignited in wisps of flame, Obadiah scrambled away. Kae stepped back, regaining his balance and shaking out his hands, which sparked with orange magic, _Obadiah’s magic—_

“It seems you need something from me, again,” Kaecilius said with saccharine sweetness.

Obadiah growled.

“I want double.”

“Deal.”

A smirk. Kae ambled backward, leaning up against Obadiah’s horse, which didn’t even budge. “Well, then, I suppose you’d better listen.”

Obadiah forced himself not to throw himself at the disgustingly simpering young man again, reminding himself that he wanted this, that he needed Kae.

And then. _Then_ he could beat the son of a bitch into whatever state he desired.

“You want magic,” Kaecilius said obviously. Obadiah didn’t do that the justification of a reply. “There are two ways to get it.”

_“Two—”_

“Sh, don’t interrupt,” Kaecilius reprimanded, his voice dripping with superiority. Obadiah hated him a little bit more.  

“The Cave houses the sorcerer’s order,” Kaecilius continued. “And the relic that brings power to each of us by awakening the potential for magic that lies within all of us. The Cave seeks to filter that awakening to only those with the greatest potential. That would be me.” Kaecilius waved sarcastically. “So, it allows me, and a mysterious number of others, to enter it. If you aren’t one of the chosen few… well. The Cave rejects you. And then it closes the relic off forever in an explosive collapse of its energy.”

“And you didn’t think to _mention_ this _fucking years ago?”_ Obadiah spat the words through his teeth.

“Hey,” Kae shrugged. “Not much money in sorcery.”

Obadiah imagined wrapping his hands around that neck and squeezing slowly, until no more breathy sarcasm could leak into existence.

“Before you ask, no, I can’t go in and bring the relic out to you. Once you leave, the Cave will reject your re-entrance the same way it does outsiders.” Kaecilius indicated catastrophic collapse with a flick of his fingers and the avalanche destruction of a nearby sand dune. “But fear not! There’s hope!”

Obadiah waited.

“Magic can be transferred from a sorcerer to an ordinary idiot. All you have to do is kill them.”

“What?”

Kaecilius spoke again, slowly, as though he was conversing with an invalid. “All you have to do is kill a sorcerer.”

A pause. The hot, hard wind whipped glittering sand grains around them, visible in the light drifting from the mouth of the Cave.

Obadiah smiled.

But when he lunged, he was met with a wave of power that knocked him to his knees, grinding sand into his skin, shoving it down his throat. He coughed, struggling to draw breath through the coating of grime inside him.

“Don’t even try,” Kaecilius said. And this time his voice was low and angry, dark with raw power. “I could end your life in an instant—in _half_ an instant. I am a practiced sorcerer; I not only have my magic awakened, but I _know how to use it.”_

Obadiah swallowed the sand in his throat, coughing again. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “What do you suggest, then?” he growled.

Kae’s expression changed so quickly it almost gave Obadiah whiplash.

“Oh, it’s easy,” Kae said, helping Obadiah to his feet. “Assuming you allow me use of your godson.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot and angst, angst and plot.


	3. Chapter 3

It was Kaecilius who found him, the next time he passed through the servant’s hall.

Tony couldn’t bring himself to stand, to smirk, to form an explanation when Kae halted before him in surprise. The man stared at his seated form, curled around his knees, and slipped a hand hastily into his pocket. Tony’s eyes followed the motion vaguely, but he also couldn’t bring himself to question it.

“What are you doing here?” the servant hissed. 

Tony shrugged. “Just thought I’d sleep pressed up against the stones, y’know. For fun.”

Kaecilius rolled his eyes, and Tony felt a burst of satisfaction. It gave him the strength to lift a hand and wipe the blood from his lip. 

Kaecilius’s eyes flickered further down the hall, and for a moment, Tony thought he was going to leave. But the servant crouched beside him somewhat hesitantly, offering a hand. Tony didn’t take it.

“The Sultan?” Kae asked.

Tony didn’t do that the justice of a response. He was the prince of Agrabah; there was  hardly anyone who could touch him, let alone hurt him. Raising an eyebrow at Kae, Tony let the man answer his own question. 

Kae sighed. “I’ll go get Stane—”

“Don’t.” Tony barely managed to keep the snap of fear from his voice. “It’s my fault, anyway.” 

Kaecilius was silent, and Tony hugged his knees closer to his chest. His clothes were soiled, but these were his tinkering ones, anyway; no one would notice. 

He wondered if someone had fed Dummy that evening. Probably not; the cat would be so grumpy when he got back. Hopefully he wouldn’t blame Tony for being late, though one never could tell with the somewhat volatile cat.

The silence stretched, and Tony almost forgot Kaecilius was there as he slipped ever-closer to an exhausted sleep. But the man suddenly leaned forward, tapping some strange rhythm on Tony’s forehead. Quietly he said, “why don’t you leave?”

Tony’s half-closed eyes snapped back to him. “What?”

“It wouldn’t be hard. You could climb the gate, you could run.”

Tony scoffed, his chest aching with the movement. “No I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“They’d find me.”

“And?” Kaecilius watched him with those brown eyes, wreathed in their strange designs of dark khol. 

“And much as I hate to admit it, I do have somethings to lose.” Tony smirked, and it managed to look somewhat like his usual one. 

“And they aren’t worth the risk?”

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it again, an irritated huff escaping his taken-aback throat. “I—I’m the prince.”

“But you don’t want to be.” Kaecilius’s expression didn’t change, boring into Tony, who thought he could read the blaze of power deep behind his eyes. 

“No,” he admitted. “But I have to be. I’m royal blood, I’m the heir… I’m all that’s left of Mother. They’re relying on me.” He gestured vaguely to the air around him, trying to indicate  _ everyone,  _ trying to explain the reason the decision had been made for him. “To rule.”

Kaecilius stood back up, taking a few steps further down the hall. “But answer me this, Tony Stark; do you deserve that throne?”

Before Tony could answer, the servant had ducked away into the shadowy corridor and left him with nothing but the warm stones and the echoes of his words.

And a dawning, undeniable answer.

* * *

 

“Okay, Peter, you know the drill,” Stephen said, perching lightly on the balls of his feet atop the navy canvas of the market stall. The fresh scent of whole and sliced melons drifted up from beneath them. Stephen’s eyes flashed across the people below, carefully watching their movements and the clattering paths of the passing wagons and ambling camels, waiting for the opportune moment. “Go. Now.”

Peter saluted with a grin and folded himself over the edge of the stall, making sure to make far more noise than any decent thief would dream of. Stephen heard the indignant yelp of the stall owner, and started to count. 

After four seconds, he leaned over the canopy of the stall and snagged a random melon from the top of the stash in the back. He could feel its cool surface through the wraps of canvas against his fingers. Meeting Peter’s eye upside-down, Stephen scrambled back up, the melon clutched to his chest. 

He knew Peter was releasing his own divertory melon, staying in view until the owner’s suspicion was satisfactorily waned. A few moments later, Peter came climbing back onto the canopy. He grinned at Stephen, his face flushed with blood now draining back into the rest of his body, and picked his way over to Stephen’s perch. 

“Nice work,” Stephen said. He crushed the skin of the melon against his knee and handed the fruit over to Peter, who’s working hands made quick work of the peel. The boy handed him half, and they dug into the light green flesh within, juice running down their chins. “Works every time.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Except—”

“Do  _ not  _ bring that up,” Stephen said, pointedly jabbing a bit of melon in his direction. 

“I’m just saying…” The boy simpered into his breakfast, and Stephen lifted his eyes to the heavens. 

“Well, stop saying it, and eat your breakfast.”

* * *

 

It was everything he’d imagined it’d be. 

The rising sun had yet to bake the marketplace to unbearable temperatures, and Tony kept his drab, brown hood over his form despite the heat. The fabric was still quite fine, though he’d done the best he could to soil it enough to be unnoticed. 

Walking through the market, now, he wasn’t sure why he’d worried. There was  _ so much,  _ so many people and objects and voices clamoring forth; a European would hardly have stood out, and even then only as a wealthy prospector to exploit a few coins from. It was liberating, breathtaking, to walk through a throng of people that had the audacity to bump into him, who’s glances hid nothing behind their initial interest: no calculation, no analysis, no scheming of the court. 

Tony inhaled deeply, coughing on the mingling pungency of fish and nuts and fruit, of oil and wood and textiles that rested in every stall. He thought he could smell the business of this place, the cluttered thoughts of the people rushing by. Camels glared at him with beady eyes. Marketers did the same, calling out their wares with increasing flourish.

“Clever boy, buy a pot? No finer pot in brass or silver!”

“Sugar dates! Sugar dates and figs! Sugar dates and pistachios!”

“Perhaps he seeks a necklace, a pretty necklace for a pretty woman he’s courting?” 

Tony grinned a bit. No, he was pretty sure if he was courting someone, he’d be buying the pot instead.

The smell of fish suddenly grew all the more obvious, and he nearly walked into the slimy flesh of a particularly large one being brandished in his face. “FISH! Fresh fish, we catch ‘em, you buy ‘em!”

Like he’d be wasting his meager funds on that. “I don’t think so.”

Retreating a bit further toward the center of the street, Tony turned his attention back to the city. It’d take a few more hours to make his way to the outskirts; maybe there he could bribe a ride from some merchant on their way to China, or Egypt—

Something hard and unforgiving slammed into him, and Tony stumbled forward, landing hard on his hands and knees. His bruised shoulder and ribs protested sharply. Twisting, not sure whether to be irritated or apologetic, Tony turned a glare to behind him. An overturned cart spilled its passenger onto the dry dirt street beside him, one wheel still forlornly twisting on a now-broken axle. Tony winced.

The man climbed to his feet, nearly snarling at Tony. “Idiot boy! Look what you’ve done!”

“All I’ve done is pop your spoke band off the axle rod and loosen the rub block,” Tony snapped back. He scooted over to the cracked cart, ignoring the protests of the really quite overprotective owner and let his hands ghost over the parts. 

He dug his fingers into the spokes of the wheel, hauling the twisted bits of metal and wood toward him and then shoving them abruptly in, forcing the axle rod back into its socket. A flick of his wrist had the bottom break bar back in line with the hangers, and the rub block nestled in it’s place against the wheel’s curve. 

He stood up, dusting off his hands. “There. No harm done.”

The man climbed to his feet, not looking the least bit grateful as he pushed his cart back up and gripped its handles jerkily. He called another insult over his shoulder as he made his way back through the market, and Tony made a rude gesture towards the back of his head.

“Apparently the assholes aren’t exclusive to the palace,” he grumbled. 

And as if to prove his point, a hand grabbed his collar.

* * *

 

Stephen and Peter ate in silence, watching the movements of the market with disconnected indifference. The melon’s moisture was cool on their hands and in their throats, and Stephen was disinclined to get into more trouble today. 

It was far less work to watch other people do it, he thought as some fool stepped backward into the path of an approaching cart and sent himself and the vehicle sprawling. The city guardsmen, slumped in boredom against one of the buildings, perked up.  _ Oof,  _ Stephen thought with less sympathy then he probably should have. At least the brute would be distracted; it’d likely be a good time for him and Peter to make a run for it. 

Then the unfortunate boy stood up, and  _ fixed the cart.  _

In only a few moments, he’d manipulated mechanical parts that Stephen wouldn’t have been able to distinguish, let alone fix, into their previous places. Clever fingers moved with almost disinterested ease, as though the problem hardly constituted his brain power at all. 

Stephen leaned forward.

The cart driver climbed suspiciously to his feet and shoved the cart back upright. Even Stephen could tell it began to move without a hitch, and couldn’t help the impressed nod that had his chin dipping. 

Rolling away through the street, the cart driver said something snappish and likely filthy. The boy responded by thrusting his thumb into the air. But his irritated, slightly weary chestnut eyes were on the movements of the cart, still assessing his handiwork. 

When the city guardsman coiled a hand around the boy’s ruff, Stephen was already moving.

Peter called after him, confused, but Stephen didn’t pause, weaving through the crowd that parted around the guard and his catch like gnats from a warbler. 

“Causing trouble this morning, so soon?” 

Stephen knew that sneer. The nobles used it when they sought unjustified punishment; the street soldiers used it when they turned from guard to bully. He sped up.

“I haven’t caused anything,” the boy huffed, sounding more irked than scared. Stephen saw him hanging in the oaf of a guard's grip, not trying to fight or even to squirm; just watching the man with aloof disappointment that Stephen had to admit was likely more effective. “Ask that asshole who ran into me with his cart. I fixed it, anyway.”

“I don’t allow such tricks in my square of the market.”

And the boy went still. Completely still, as if preparing for a blow. 

Stephen didn’t intend to let the guard clue into the invitation for violence inherent in the short boy’s body language. He stepped forward, straightening his shoulders and crossing his hands behind his back to keep their weakness out of view. 

“What are you doing?” he demanded, letting a touch of confusion curl the edges of his tone.

Both boy and guardsman looked up.

Stephen looked between them, then straightened up further. “Master Iago is waiting; where are the materials?” 

He met the boy’s eyes, hoping he was good at improvisation. 

“I was just on my way,” the boy said. Stephen saw the guardsman's grip loosen just slightly, his square face looking between Stephen and the boy with confusion. 

“Apologies,” Stephen said to the man, taking another step forward. “Our master runs the blacksmith over near the West Bank; he sent us to go and get first pick of this morning’s tin.”

“You… know this boy?” the guardsman said. 

_ Damn, he’s a dull one.  _

Stephen sighed, flashing a mischievous glance toward the boy before slipping back into character and saying, “Sadly, yes. He is my brother. He’s a bit… distractible.”

The guard's grip tightened again. “He’s brought trouble to the market.”

Stephen’s voice hardened. “Surely not. The apprentice of such a  _ prestigious  _ blacksmith would never seek harm in your market.”

A flicker of satisfaction sparked in Stephen’s gut as surprise and nervousness warred for space in the guard's small eyes at his underlying threat. After a moment, surprise won out, and he released the boy, stepping back.

“See that it doesn’t happen again,” the guard growled. 

Stephen bowed, smiling mirthlessly. “Of course, sir.” Still feeling the pressure of the soldier's gaze, Stephen jerked his chin at the boy. “Come on, then.”

The boy had the sense to put as much space between himself and the guard as he could, but as they turned to join the flow of market goers once again, Peter came exploding from the crowd. He nearly bowled Stephen over with the force of his run, and of his confusion. “Stephen, what the fuck are you doing—”

He cut off, eyes snapping to the brute behind them.

Stephen closed his eyes.  _ “Perfect timing,”  _ he hissed. Then, taking Peter’s wrist and looking back at the boy, he said somewhat apologetically, “this is the part where we run.”

* * *

 

“What sort of a title is “The Sands of Time?” Obadiah muttered, his hands stuffed into the wraps of his rope as he watched Kaecilius work. 

It was breathtaking, but he refused to let one iota of his wonder break through into his expression. Kae’s hands wove orange ribbons into existence, sending them diving and wrapping around individual grains of opalescent sand. The air around him glittered with the individually suspended particles. They glinted like a thousand stars caught in the sorcerer’s aura, bowing to his power, ensnared by his will. 

One by one, minute by minute, the sandstorm grew around Kaecilius’s form.

“Do you think you could hurry it up?” Obadiah growled, tapping a foot against the tile beneath him. “I do have a godson to find.”

“We have to give said godson some time to navigate the market.” Even Kaecilius’s voice was raw with power; Obadiah had to suppress a shudder of jealous want so strong it had his hands twitching within his pockets. “If you hadn’t tried to keep him here longer, we’d already have our spy set up.”

“So it’s my fault, is it?”

Kaecilius smirked. “Of course it is, Stane. Everything is, at least until I get my treasure.”

Obadiah rolled his eyes. “Get on with it, please.”

And the sorcerer obliged. Throwing his fingers wide, Kaecilius roared something in a language Obadiah didn’t understand, and the glittering particles suddenly froze. In the blink of an eye, they flashed together, forming a crystal of undulating facets, reflecting light in tiny white pools on the walls, the floor, in Kaecilius’s gaze. 

“Sands of Time,” the sorcerer murmured. “Reveal to me my fellow sorcerer. The relic-chosen. The one who may enter the cave.”

The pools of light collected on the ceramic floor. 

Obadiah smiled, pushing off from the wall. “Let’s extend him a little invitation, shall we?”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thumbs-up is a a rude gesture in this area, apparently. That's what Google said, at least???
> 
> Lol. Anyway, sorry this is a bit later; midterms are a biiiiitch... but I made it! And I wrote this boy, so!
> 
> Hope you liked. Drop a comment to make my day, or a kudos if you're rushed! It only takes a click. *wink.*


	4. Chapter 4

“So, do tell me exactly why you were so inclined to save my life?”

Stephen paused on the ladder, looking down at the boy waiting to follow. On the rooftop above, Peter was pacing impatiently, his gaze searching and researching the area around them for sign of pursuers.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Stephen said, resuming his ascent. “I hardly saved your life. Whoever’s been charged with keeping peace in Agrabah has those guards a little blade-happy, but they won’t kill anyone.”

Peter leaned down over the edge of the building. “Except—”

“What did I say about bringing that up?” 

Peter grinned and disappeared over the lip of the roof. Stephen rolled his eyes, stepping off the ladder and turning to watch the boy. 

“That would be Obadiah Stane,” the boy muttered, scaling the ladder in a few quick bounds. 

“Who?” Peter cocked his head. 

The boy smiled slightly at him, gesturing toward the tiers of the palace just visible over the skyline of the city. “The man charged with keeping peace in Agrabah.”

“Hm,” Stephen said, stepping onto the lip of the roof. “Well, I have some words for him.”

Peter tapped his shoulder. “Like that one time—”

“Peter, I swear to Allah—”

The boy behind them chuckled, and effectively cut Stephen off. The laugh was surprised, as though the boy was just as surprised to hear it as Stephen was, but after a moment, he seemed to unchain it. And it was impossible not to grin, too, as that liberated chuckle filled the hot midmorning air. 

Stephen decided he very much wanted to hear it again. 

“Um,” Stephen said eloquently, turning his gaze to his bare feet and scuttling to the other end of the roof. He wrapped his wrists somewhat awkwardly around one of the long poles nestled against the edge of the building and lept from the edge. Letting the plank take his weight, he vaulted between rooftops.

Peter didn’t bother with the pole. He pounced gracefully over the three-story gap, his feet catching on the brick of the roof beside Stephen as he ran off his momentum. 

Their mysterious companion raised an eyebrow, gripping a pole of his own and carefully following Stephen’s movements. His hood dropped off as he soared for a moment, and as the boy landed, Stephen almost succumbed to the urge to offer a steading hand. 

After steadying himself, the boy shoved the pole toward him, and Stephen nestled them both against the wall for later use. “So,” he said, standing, “first time in the marketplace?”

The boy winced. “Was it that obvious?”

Stephen shrugged. “I mean, you didn’t… match.”

“Match?”

Peter came up to the boy’s elbow, explaining, “he has this theory. All the people fit into a slot on his ‘marketplace criteria’ so he can figure out how best to steal from them.”

“Oh?” The boy sounded genuinely interested as they continued their path toward Stephen and Peter’s home. 

Stephen shrugged, glad he was ahead of the boy so he couldn’t pick up on how flustered Stephen was becoming. “Well, I thought you were somewhat idiotic when you stepped in front of the cart—”  _ oh, good going, Strange, just insult him why don’t you—  _ “but then you fixed it, not asking for anything in return. Perhaps because you were guilty; but, you flipped the driver when he left. Someone who fixed the cart wouldn’t have fought the guardsmen; educated market goers often don’t. But you didn’t just fight him, you  _ ordered him around.  _ It takes guts to do that.” 

They ducked under the next roof, making their way into the sheltered stairwell that was the thieves’ home.

“All of those seem like observations to me,” the boy said. “When did you make your conclusion?”

Stephen shrugged. “You don’t fit the marketplace _—_ ”

“So,” Peter finished for him, “you don’t come from the marketplace.” 

“You got me,” the boy said, raising his hands in mock surrender. 

Stephen smiled, trotting across their open homespace. “So,” he said, suddenly self-conscious. “This is it.”

“You live here?” The boy looked around the area, his eyes snagging on all of the broken, ripped parts that suddenly stood out like bruises to Stephen.

Stephen looked down again, swallowing. “Yeah, uh, just me and Pete.”

Peter grinned. “We come and go as we please.” 

The boy smiled back at him. “Sounds wonderful.”

“Where’dya come from, then, if you aren’t from the market?” Peter asked. Stephen took the opportunity to slip over to the curtains that covered the abrupt plunge toward the street below and draw them open, letting a bit of the hot air escape. 

“It doesn’t matter,” the boy said, something in his voice bitter and fractured. 

Stephen looked at him, and found him looking back.

“Why?” Peter wondered, ambling over to Stephen to sit against the edge of the gap and nestle against the far wall. 

“I’m not going back. I can’t.”

Stephen didn’t pursue the question; he could see the boy shutting down, guarding himself from something corrosive and far, far too familiar. He rubbed at his hands.

“You didn’t answer my question,” the boy said after a moment. 

Stephen looked up. “Which?”

The boy joined them, sliding onto the ledge and swinging his feet out to dangle over the plunge. His eyes trained on the palace shattering the horizon. Leaning to rest his elbows on his knees, still watching the sparkling domes of the building, he said, “why did you help me?”

Stephen opened his mouth, then closed it. The boy didn’t want an easy answer, a one-size-fits-all analysis. He was confused, truly confused, and it made Stephen’s stomach twist. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” he replied softly. 

The boy’s gaze snapped to him, and Stephen noticed the wide intelligence of his eyes, the cleverness behind his expression. It was so much more obvious, now, as his short brown hair stuck up with sweat and sand and the sharp curve of his jaw caught shadows beneath it. He didn’t answer Stephen, but he was waiting for elaboration. 

Stephen obliged. “You fixed what you broke. You weren’t afraid to let the world know you broke it, and even less afraid to let it know you fixed it. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I know what the guards’ punishment feels like; you didn’t deserve it.”

“Didn’t deserve it…” The boy’s voice was nothing more than a whisper.

Stephen smiled, hugging his knees to his chest. “What’s your name?”

* * *

 

He’d never met anyone like them. 

The youngest one, Pete—short for Peter, most likely—had Tony been like that, once? Curious and quick, agile in both body and intellect? Unafraid, unbroken? Maybe he had, before the shadow of his father, of Stane and the kingdom and the people within— _ these people— _ loomed over his soul. And he found himself wanting to do anything to keep Peter from falling under a shadow of his own. 

Then there was the enigma next to him. 

Tony couldn’t seem to stop glancing at him, stop his gaze roving over his long form and lingering on his face, his hands. The loosely bandaged hands, hidden behind the boy at first, Tony had only truly noticed when he’d gripped the pole with his wrists, instead. Tony wanted to know what had happened, he wanted to know  _ everything  _ about this strange and wonderful street urchin. 

The boy had his knees drawn up to his chest, waiting for Tony’s answer. And Tony figured it was safe, so long as he didn’t let his last name slip.

“Tony,” he said.

The boy nodded. “Nice to meet you. That’s Peter Parker—” he pointed behind Tony to the kid who was now, somehow, hanging upside-down from the curtains like a child-sized spider— “and I’m Stephen Strange.”

_ Stephen and Peter.  _ Tony smiled a bit. 

“So, how’d you two meet, then?” he asked, scooching backward so he could look between them. 

Stephen raised an eyebrow at the clambering form of Peter. “That’s a good question. Want to answer that, Pete?”

“Um, well…” Peter swung right-side up, grinning and cringing simultaneously. “I may have been starving, just a bit, when my parents died—they got sick—and got desperate enough to try to steal some cheese.”

“Pathetically,” Stephen cut in, and Tony swung his gaze to his other side. “I almost didn’t think he was trying to steal something, at first. It was that bad.”

“So, what?” Tony laughed. “You got him out of a market arrest like you did for me?”

“Nah.” Stephen shrugged, a smile pulling one side of his mouth up beneath a pronounced cheekbone. “I helped him steal it and we hauled ass from the premises together.”

“And it’s been that way ever since!” Peter climbed back onto the curtains. “He helps me ‘cause he can plan things and figure out people, and I help him ‘cause—” Peter broke off. 

Tony glanced back at Stephen, who had moved almost unnoticeably to tuck his hands behind his knees. The boy wasn’t looking at either of them. 

“Er, I help him,” Peter finished lamely. 

The whole exchange was seed for an awkward silence that Tony decidedly wanted to avoid, so he jumped to respond when Peter’s voice trailed into nothing. “You make a good team, then.”

The look of complete relief that Peter attempted to quickly school into indifference was comical. He was far worse at it than Stephen. “That we are.”

Tony looked back at the palace, swallowing hard. He’d never seen it from the outside, with its deep, vibrant colors and shining copper domes, sprawling incomprehensibly above the city. In the heart of it, the thin turquoise of the gate doors flashed, and Tony let his eyes travel up to the top tiers. He imagined he could see his window, imagined he could see Dummy’s yellow eyes in the light. The palace’s tiers groped up into the sky, as if to ensnare the very sun and pull it within their grasp. 

“That must be nice.”

He didn’t realize he’d spoken until Peter replied, a bit miffed, “what?”

“A team,” Tony explained, not looking away from the horizon. “It must be nice.”

There was a quiet  _ thump  _ as Peter swung down from the curtains to land next to him. Tony saw his sandy, sooty feet in his peripheral vision as Peter sat down. “You’re part of our team, now,” the boy said.

Tony’s gaze snapped to him. “What?”

Peter grinned. “Yup. Stephen was an idiot for you; means he likes you, and that he thinks you could do something great. And I think you’re just fantastic; so you’re part of the team.”

Tony stared at him. Then, slowly, he piviotted his gaze to Stephen, still curled against the ledge like a perching falcon. 

The boy remained motionless, expressionless, for a long moment. And then, a whisper of a smile. And a nod. “You’re welcome to stay,” Stephen said quietly.

_ To stay.  _

The winds from the East brought the sand to China. The sun from the west sent its rays to Egypt. 

“Why do you stay here?” Tony asked. “In Agrabah?”

“It’s our home,” Peter replied, as though that was obvious.

“But why?” Tony pried. “What did it do to deserve your loyalty?”

“We’re hardly loyal to it,” Stephen interjected. “If anything, we’re parasites.”

“Then why not leave?”

Something hard snapped up behind Stephen’s expression, and Tony almost flinched at the anger, the violence, that suddenly seemed to burn within the boy’s curled stance. “Why not stay?” He gestured sharply to the city, spread out below them. The wind pulled at his bandages. “What prospects could a couple of street rats see in another city but new obstacles to stealing bread? New systems to work around so we might see the sun tomorrow? I’m sure every great city is just  _ begging  _ for such a resource as a couple of skilless thieves.”

_ “Stephen.”  _ Peter was standing again. 

Stephen whipped his gaze to the boy, and Tony saw he was almost snarling. But Peter didn’t so much as flinch. Tony found he was holding his breath as the seconds stretched by, neither Stephen nor Peter breaking their stares. 

And then a flash of realization softened Stephen’s expression. He looked away, swallowing hard, and tucked his hands back behind his knees. Tony saw his mouth form an apology, but the word was so quiet he couldn’t hear it over the wind. 

“He gets like that,” Peter looked at Tony, winking as though nothing had happened. “Thinks he’s a burden and gets mad about it.”

“Peter—” Stephen looked up. 

“You just snapped at him!” Peter protested. “He’s allowed to know why!”

“It’s okay,” Tony said, raising his hands. “I didn’t know it was a sore subject.” 

But he heard the titles Stephen has assigned to himself, heard them and understood.  _ Obstacle, burden, skilless, useless. _

Tony had such a list himself.

Deciding that the silence beginning to stretch was unacceptable, Tony shifted on the ledge and said, “I want to go somewhere. Far away. Maybe I’ll make it to Khanate or Bulgaria, where everything is new and I can be new, too.”

The other boys looked back at him, Peter perking up and Stephen slowly resting his chin against his knees to listen. 

“Have you seen the Chinese fireworks?” Tony asked. He continued before either could answer, his hands beginning to gesticulate unconsciously. “I’m going to figure out how they work, how the black fire makes those colors and those sounds. If it can do that, why not other things? Great things? I’m going to make those things. But I can’t do that here.” 

“Aren’t you scared?” Peter wondered.

Tony turned to him. “Of what?” 

The boy looked taken aback, and Tony couldn’t help but smile a bit as Peter’s eyes searched him as though he’d suddenly just become something strange and new.

_ I hate my home too much to fear the unknown.  _

Tony glanced at Stephen for a moment, wanting to analyze his reactions to Tony’s words, wanting to puzzle out what ticked beneath the strange boy’s skin. 

Stephen caught the quick flick of Tony’s gaze with eyes an array of colors Tony had only seen on the palace mosaics, and Tony found his breath catching in his throat and his words sticking on his tongue. 

It was Peter that saved him, bless the kid; “won’t you miss anyone?” 

Tony forcibly pulled his gaze to Peter, who’s face was curious as he tried to understand why Tony would ever make the choice to run. His curls fell in front of his eyes in an unruly mop, and Tony thought he looked a bit like Dummy. 

“Everyone I have to miss has already gone,” Tony said with a shrug.

But… maybe he’d miss these two. Who’d risked their skins for a stranger in the marketplace and brought him to their secret home, who’d shared every meager thing they had with him, who he knew so little about but wanted to know more.

“I know what you mean, I think,” Peter replied.

* * *

 

When Stephen finally clambered back up into the roof nook, three empty wooden bowls clutched to his chest, afternoon had slipped into evening. Setting sunlight lit the copper palace domes aflame, turned the sky behind it red, and Stephen felt maybe it was something to be proud of.

“Still alive?” he called, making his way back into the home.

“Yup!” Peter called, echoed by Tony’s affirming grunt.

“Good.”

The two of them had scratched a grid onto the sandy floor, and were dueling it out with chess pieces made of sticks and cloth that Stephen was positive hadn’t been there when he’d gone to get bowls. He blamed Tony.

“Who’s winning?” he asked, ambling over to the somewhat worn, patched trough in the corner. 

“Me,” both of them said at the same time. Stephen chuckled as they swung their gazes to glare at each other.

“It’s totally me,” Tony protested. “The student has not yet outplayed the teacher!”

“That’s a good line,” Stephen said vacantly, setting the bowls down. Their water level was frighteningly low, but when wasn’t it?

He shakily dipped one of the crude wooden things into the liquid, allowing a few mouthfuls to pool in the bottom, then painstakingly maneuvered it so he was holding it between his chest and wrist. They couldn’t afford for him to spill anything. 

When the long process of filling the bowls was over, Stephen slid back across the room stand above Peter and Tony. Peter took the water from him automatically—they had a system, by this point—and drank. 

“Thanks.” Tony took his own bowl, and Stephen saw the splinters on his fingers and the places where knot-tying had made his skin red. 

He grinned. Chess, courtesy of this perfect engineer’s skill.

Downing his own water, Stephen took a moment to move one of Peter’s bishops—to the dismay of Tony and the delight of Pete—then made his way back to the ledge. He sat, sliding the bowl onto the floor, then pushed the bundle of brown fabric that was Tony’s hood off after it. Slowly, he flexed his stiff, aching hands; he’d had the bandages on for too long.

Stephen glanced at where Tony sat, his back to him. Yeah, like rebandaging was going to happen any time soon. 

It was because Stephen was looking that he saw it.

As Tony leaned forward, his arm extending to move a chess piece, the cuff of his shirt shifted. Just slightly, it pulled up his wrist to expose a sliver more of skin.

Stephen was on his feet and across the room before he’d realized he’d moved.

* * *

 

“What the fuck—” Tony began, trying to pull back as Stephen suddenly teleported into his personal space. 

He froze when the boy extended wrapped hands. Tony hadn’t seen the limbs up close, and hadn’t known what might cause the intense tremor beneath those bandages; perhaps a burn, or a laceration. He certainly hadn’t expected to be able to see the signs of twisted disfiguration, so desperately attempted to be concealed beneath canvas. His stomach twisted.

Shaking fingers curled carefully around his own, and Stephen pulled Tony’s sleeve up his forearm. Too late, Tony tried to pull away before the decidedly violent, hand-shaped bruises were exposed. 

_ Shit. _

He found the strength to look toward Peter, who’s eyes had flown wide and gaze had flooded with horror. A chess piece—a knight—fell forgotten to the ground beside him.

“Who did that to you?” Stephen’s voice was soft and ice-cold. 

“No one, nothing.” Tony yanked his arm away, breaking Stephen’s grip. The boy’s breath caught, just slightly, but it was enough for Tony to see the sudden pain on his face as his palms recoiled to his sternum. 

His hands.

Shit, Tony’d hurt him—

But Stephen reached out again, taking his wrist with a gentleness that made Tony’s chest twist. Tony knew a mix of shame and fear shone through his expression, but he couldn’t seem to school it into indifference as the boy’s bandaged fingers lightly prodded against the contusions.

“Does it hurt?” Peter questioned.

Tony shrugged.

“Is it why you’re running?”

Another shrug. 

Stephen didn’t say anything. He’d gone so still Tony thought he might not be breathing.

So it was abrupt when he suddenly released Tony’s arm, stepping back almost too quickly. Tony looked up in slight befuddlement as Stephen said, “ice therapy or compression, Peter do we have—”

_ “There they are.” _

Three boys snapped their gazes up. 

Eight sneering, powerful faces met them from behind drawn blades and clenched fists. And Tony recognized the guard from the market, recognized the embroidered seal of Obadiah’s elite soldiers.

He’d been found. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cue the PLOT! It APPROACHES! 
> 
> Lolol, thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great week! Leave a comment or a kudos; I'll see you soon! :)


	5. Chapter 5

 

Stephen took a moment to curse, long and vile and drawn-out.

He figured the situation deserved it. 

And then he was racing backward, pulling Tony and Peter to their feet, scrambling away from the flood of hostiles invading their hovel of a home.

“They’re after me,” Tony snarled, shaking himself out of Stephen’s grip to look over his shoulder. 

“Pretty sure they’re after us,” Peter objected.

Tony cursed to rival Stephen’s.

Hot stone burned Stephen’s feet as he stepped up onto the ledge, leaning out over the plunge to the street far below. Peter followed, already pressing his hands to the wall and beginning to climb. Turning back to Tony, Stephen reached out.

Tony met his gaze with an expression screaming a thousand things at once. “My father must have sent them—”

Stephen didn’t let him finish. “Do you trust me?”

“What?” Shock joined the haze of emotions on Tony’s face. 

“Do you trust me?” Stephen extended his hand, presenting the weak, bandaged palm and hoping Tony would understand.

“I—yes.”

The moment strong, clever fingers found Stephen’s, he gripped them with all the strength he had. “Then jump.”

Tony didn’t even hesitate; nothing jerked Stephen’s hand as gravity took him, took them both. Peter threw himself after. The air pulled them into freefall, ripping his weak grip from Tony’s, and Stephen’s stomach smashed against his ribs.

They didn’t fall far, but it still hurt like all Jahannam when they connected with the cloth of the balcony below. For a moment, they were suspended, until the  _ rip  _ of ancient fabric had them slipping into thin air again. Stephen tried to cough in a breath, but the rush of air stole it away. 

But the overhang kept them from breaking every bone in their body when they hit the street below, and he was on his feet a moment later. “Peter, I fucking love you.”

The boy grinned. “Told you it’d work.”

Clatter of movement and shadows of hostiles caught Stephen’s attention, and he whirled. Tony was up beside them, rolling out his wrists beneath tense shoulders and watching Stephen for their next plan.

“Again,” Stephen said, smiling ruefully, “this is the part where we run.”

But this time, they could hear pursuers on their tail. The sound of heavy boots hitting sand and cobblestone echoed not just from behind them, but from the alleys along side. Stephen knew these had to be more than ordinary guards, with a purpose and a reason and maybe even a plan of their own.

He could be leading them into a trap. He couldn’t afford to risk that. 

But it wasn’t like they could stop running, either.

Stephen swallowed, fighting away the feeling that they were already trapped.

The setting sun had already sunk below the city skyline, and the shadows of Agrabah stretched long and dangerous. Stephen scanned them, praying he wouldn’t see the flash of steel or the darkness of a figure. Tony kept close, and Peter stayed mere feet behind them to watch the approaching enemies. 

“I’m sorry.” Tony’s voice came suddenly, breathless. “This is my fault.”

Stephen shook his head. “No. These guys have been after us for years,” he panted.

“Tony’s short for Anthony.”

Stephen turned his head to raise an eyebrow at his companion, though his steps didn’t slow. “Why… is that relevant—”

“Anthony Stark.”

* * *

 

Stephen almost stopped running. 

Behind them, Peter demanded, “what?”

Tony didn’t answer, turning his gaze away so neither couldn’t read his expression. 

“You’re Tony Stark,” Stephen said flatly.

“Yup.”

“Prince of Agrabah. That Tony Stark.” The utter indecipherability of Stephen’s tone had Tony wincing.

“At your service?” he muttered, running a nervous hand through his hair. 

_ “What the fuck are you doing here?” _

Tony forcibly looked at his feet, concentrating on running from the soldiers at their tail. From Obadiah’s soldiers. From the catastrophe he’d brought these two boys with enough to worry about, already. 

He never should have stayed, he never should have followed. They didn’t deserve this.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said quietly. “I want to go, I want to see the world, I want to be  _ free.” _

How selfish and immature was that? The prince, with everything, wanting something else? Wealthy and powerful, with a defined future to await and a long life ahead of him, he had the audacity to envy these street rats?

Neither Stephen nor Peter responded. But something told Tony it wasn’t out of judgement. Something told him they understood. 

He told that something to shut up, and kept running.

Directly into the chest of a slim, quick soldier stepping from the alley beside him.

* * *

 

It took seconds. 

Just seconds, for their path to go from clear to crowded, from their hope to go from flickering to dashed. Stephen’s hand flashed out to pull Tony— _ Prince Stark— _ back from the blade the guard was quickly drawing, sending him stumbling backward into Peter. 

“Try not to make this harder than it has to be,” the guard said, stepping forward. He was short, but none the less imposing, with a mousey sort of face and dirty blond curls. Sharp jaw curled into a smirk of triumph, he motioned behind him and more figures stepped from shadows and doorways.

Stephen stopped counting at a dozen. There were so many—too many.

“And how might we do that?” Stephen said, instinctively stepping in front of the boys behind him. 

But it was Tony who answered. “I’ll come back with you,” he said, gently swatting away the hand Stephen extended to keep him back. “Leave them alone.”

Tony’s sleeve was still bunched up over his wrist.  The bruises there were so dark against his skin. 

And shaped like hands. Handprints on the forearms of a boy who wanted freedom, a boy who wouldn’t, couldn’t go back to the cold, wealthy air of his home. 

Who would hit a prince?

There was only one answer to that. Which was why Stephen spun to Peter and locked onto his fearful brown eyes, an order passing between them as unmistakably as if it had been spoken. 

“No,” Peter said, shaking his head. Tony turned, slightly, and Stephen saw his eyes darting between the two of them and the guards, as though he could keep both within his sight. 

“He can’t go back, remember?” Stephen murmured, tapping his own forearm. “It’ll only be the dungeon, anyway.”

Understanding dawned on Peter’s face. And with it, a nod.

“What—” Tony began. 

“Take the ratpath. Peter knows the way,” Stephen said, shoving the shorter boy backward. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Peter didn’t give Tony time to protest, gripping Tony’s hand and racing backward. Stephen turned back to the soldiers, not daring to meet Tony’s gaze in case those clever eyes read everything. 

A few of the guards peeled off from the sides to pursue the prince—they wouldn’t make it far, after Peter got himself and Tony onto the agile path through the Agrabah rooftops. The kid knew every handhold better than he knew the streets. It took a level of agility to scale the ratpath, a level of agility one couldn’t reach wearing armor.

Or bandages on broken fingers.

“Just you and me, then,” said the sharp-faced soldier before him, drawing his sword. 

Stephen moved.

He only made it because they weren’t expecting him to dart towards them. As soon as he listed sideways, the guards shifted their weight to run toward him, to catch him before he raced after his companions. So when Stephen latched his hands on an unfortunate man’s sword hilt and pulled, no one had time to react before the rapier was in his hands.

Both of his hands. The warping of his fingers wouldn’t let him twist into the hilt, wouldn’t let him form a grip with enough strength to wield the weapon with any precision. 

Not anymore.

But Stephen raised the rapier anyway, for it took three minutes to get to the ratpath from the street where he stood. 

“Yeah,” Stephen growled, fixing the soldier in his gaze. “Just you and me.”

* * *

 

“Where is he—”

“Keep going,” Peter snapped, shoving at Tony’s ankles as Tony paused his climb.

The crumbling bricks were rough beneath Tony’s hands as he clambered higher through the rooftop, and the more his hands ached from exertion the more his heart climbed in his throat. 

_ I’ll be right behind you. _

They’d lost the guards almost laughably quickly, with Peter’s quick thought and movement. Tony wanted to ask about this passage—the ratpath—that Peter seemed to know like the corridors of a home, but he found he couldn’t spare the breath. The rooftops were harsh and unforgiving, especially in the dim light. Tony’d already almost fallen thrice. 

And it had only been the agile movements of his hands that had saved him. 

_ I’ll be right behind you. _

Tony looked over his shoulder, again, but the street they’d come from was long obscured by the angles of the buildings.

“He lied,” Peter said suddenly. “Obviously. He can’t take the ratpath, he’s buying us time.”

Obviously. Tony’d known, but that didn’t make it any less jarring to hear the words aloud. Buying them time, buying  _ him  _ time.

He dug in his hands and climbed higher, trying to ignore the pulling at his heart that demanded he stop, that told him he was mistaken, that roared at him to turn around. Clenching his jaw, he hauled himself over the lip of the wall and onto a stretch of flat roof and turned to offer Peter a hand.

The boy didn’t take it, instead stepping past him. “This way,” he said sharply, and Tony heard the fear tainting his voice. 

Tony managed all of one step before that tug in his chest brought him to a halt. “We have to go back.”

Peter turned to him, shaking his head. His unruly brown curls were slicked back with sweat, and the pinkness of exertion shone through beneath his sand-covered cheeks. “We can’t.”

“What we can’t do is leave him—shit, why did we leave him—” Tony was turning back toward the ladder, toward the street.

Peter grabbed his shoulder with strength no child should possess.

“It’s because of his calculation,” the boy said. “I told you. He’s like that.”

“What…”  
Peter smiled ruefully. “A calculation of consequences. He always chooses the best option, no matter how idiotic we might think it, at the time. He’s never been wrong before, I— _we_ have to trust he’ll keep his promise again, this time.”

“What consequences?” Tony asked, body still angled for the wall. 

“You.”

Tony cocked his head.

“Prince Anthony Stark, huh? Well, you’re running from the palace, from the shadow there. And you were offering to go back.”

The intelligence in Peter’s eyes reminded Tony too much of himself. 

“Well he, we, won’t let you.” Peter turned back toward the ratpath, and Tony followed, this time. “I’m taking you to the lockup; that’s where they’ll bring him. It’s not so hard to break someone out, with a little planning.”

But there was a nervousness in Peter’s eyes, and Tony thought perhaps Peter’d never been the one doing the breaking.

“But… why? You could have just let them take me,” Tony said. 

With those words, the uncertainty in Peter’s eyes disappeared. “No we couldn’t have.”

“They’ll just come after me again. I’m putting you in danger, I’m—”

“Stop!” Peter raised his hands. “Allah, you sound just like him. This isn’t your fault, and even if it was, we’d do the same thing. Stephen’d do the same thing, because you’re worth it!”

Tony took a step back, his mouth falling open.

The child glared back at him, and Tony suddenly wanted nothing more than to ruffle those sweaty curls.

“Oh,” was all he could manage.

“‘Oh’ is right, you idiot. Now come on, he’s waiting for us.”

A thousand questions, a thousand anxieties, roiled in Tony’s head, but he stayed silent as he and Peter resumed their trek through the hightop of the city. Above the skyline, Tony could spot the palace’s spires, the decorative bulbs atop them seeming to stare him down. He wondered if they’d ever stop seeing him.

They hadn’t seen him in a rooftop shack with two clever thieves.

Tony swallowed hard and sped his steps. 

They didn’t slow for anything, not even to catch their breath, but they still ripped their hands open on rough brick for nearly half an hour. By the time the dark, looming building that was the city prison was in sight below them, Tony was fighting blackness from his gaze and nearly gasping for oxygen. But he recognized that building.

He’d drawn the designs for that building. 

“Closer,” Peter said, and motioned for him to follow.

Like shadows, the two of them dropped between rooftops, chasing the street below. Tony’s hands stung from the sand pricking against his raw skin, and he resorted to wrapping a bit of his cloak around them to protect the wounds. Peter didn’t even seem to notice; Tony figured his calluses were so developed it’d be hard to feel anything, anymore.

He wondered what the skin beneath Stephen’s bandages looked like, and quickly shut that thought down.

They watched the entrance, once in view, but there was no indication of the soldiers or their prisoner. Tony’s gaze kept flicking to the darkened windows, the barred bareness of the ugly building, and found he hated the thought of Stephen being in there, even for a moment.

A thought prickled at him, in Peter’s voice.

_ He did it for you. _

That still sounded like reproach.

“Okay, what’s our plan, then?” Tony murmured, shifting onto the balls of his feet.

“We’ll need distraction; you can’t get in through the windows, but there are two doors and not enough guards—where are you going?”

Tony looked up at him, already swinging down from the roof. “You asked for distraction. Pretty sure the prince counts as distraction.”

“We need a plan, we can’t just—”

Tony waved his hand. “C’mon, I can get a few street soldiers to pay attention to me and not the door behind them. That’s when you do your thing.”

“But…”

“We need to get Stephen out.”

Peter’s voice raised, his whisper harsh with desperation, “They’ll try to take you, too!” 

_ Oh. _

Tony froze on the wall, turning his gaze back up to the boy. The kid.

He couldn’t be older than ten. 

Tony offered a lopsided smile. “Hey,” he said quietly. “It’ll be okay. Okay?”

“What if…” Peter gestured helplessly.

“We’ll deal with the what-ifs when they come along,” Tony said. “That’s always been my strategy.” 

Peter nodded, taking a deep breath and following Tony over the edge of the roof. Tony turned his gaze downward and resumed his decent, picking his way through the handholds of the bricks. He concentrated on climbing, on his plan;  _ we’ll deal with the what-ifs when they come along.  _

But the what-ifs were tickling at his own mind, making his hands shake as he stepped off the ratpath and onto the sand of the street. He shook the tingling pain out of his fingers and moved to exit the ally, gesturing to Peter to follow. 

As the prison unfolded before him, one fluid step had Tony’s shoulders rolling back, had his chin raising and his steps growing purposeful and powerful. The transition from Tony to Anthony Stark was as familiar as tying his turban. 

It still felt just as wrong.

The figures around the building didn’t turn when he approached, standing around each other in the pool of light from the torch above them. Clasping his fingers behind his back, Tony snuck a glance back toward the ally. He thought he caught a flicker of shadow from Peter’s movement, just for a moment. 

Tony shook himself, his steps speeding. 

His smirk found purchase on his face as he slipped into the reach of the light. “Hello, there.” He forced as much authority into his voice as he could. “There’s a change of plan, here—”

One of the men turned around, and Tony’s voice strangled into silence. 

Because that wasn’t a guard. 

Obadiah Stane took a step back, his face flashing with shock.  _ “Anthony?” _

Tony almost bolted, then. But he could feel Peter’s presence in the shadows beside him, remembered Stephen’s quiet, easy lie— _ I’ll be right behind you.  _ Raising his chin, Tony forced himself to take another step forward.

“Obe,” he said, and his voice did not waver. “What are you doing here.”

“I am charged with peace in Agrabah,” the man answered, brows furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing out—here?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Tony said dismissively, and realized his mistake as soon as the words had left his mouth. 

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Obadiah growled, stepping forward. “The Sultan certainly didn’t send you here. What are you doing, Anthony Stark?”

“I—” There was nothing he could say to that, but Tony tried anyway. “Kaecilius was with me; he needed stock for the apothecary.”

Obadiah raised an eyebrow. “You really expect me to believe that, Anthony? I just arrested what we thought was your  _ kidnapper _ and here you are waltzing around the prison?”

Tony heard a sharp intake of breath from the shadows beside him. 

“My… kidnapper?”  _ Oh fuck.  _ “No, that’s not—”

“What matters,” Obadiah said, stepping forward, “is that we’ve found you. You’re father isn’t happy, but the sooner you explain, the better. Come, before they lock the gates.”

“No, wait—” Tony took a step back, flinching away. Obadiah’s wiry hand flashed out like a cobra from a trainer’s basket and wrapped around his wrist, pressing into the bruises already marking the skin. Instinct had Tony’s muscles locking, had his other hand rising to protect his face. 

And something exploded from the shadows and collided with Obadiah faster than Tony could follow.

_ “Let go of him,”  _ Peter Parker snarled. 

Obadiah had no other option, needing both hands to throw the child off of him. “Out of my way, filthy brat!”

Peter landed on his feet, skidding a small distance across the cobbles. He growled at Obadiah, and Tony edged in front of him, one hand extended protectively. 

“Listen.” Tony tried to sound diplomatic, shying away from the two extremes—fear and fury—battling for dominance in his chest, “You’ve got it wrong, the boy you took was helping me. I wasn’t kidnapped.”

“I assumed so, when you came up and tried to order me about,” Obadiah said, sending a glare towards Peter. Tony moved further in front of the boy.

“So you can let him out,” Tony added. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say nothing.”

Peter’s snarl was rough behind them;  _ “He’s done more _ — _ ”  _

Tony cut him off, eyes darting toward the door and the guards still standing about it who peered at them with interest. “But whatever the ‘kidnapped a troublesome prince’ punishment is, he didn’t—doesn’t—deserve it.” 

“Perhaps not,” Obadiah said slowly, clasping his hands behind his back. 

He wasn’t looking at Tony as he spoke. 

He  _ always  _ looked people in the eye. 

“Obe?”

“Unfortunately,” the man confessed, glancing back toward the prison, “the boy’s sentence has already been carried out.”

Tony stopped breathing.

“He’s dead, Anthony.”

  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You remember Aladdin, right? How it's like, dum de dum, songs and fun, bonding, monkeys, woooo... and then 30 minutes in they're like BOOOOOOM ANGST? 
> 
> Lol anyway, sorry for yet another cliff-hanger, and all see y'all soon!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK EVERYONE!!!!! And so's the PLOT!
> 
> And the angst.
> 
> And a rat, some snark, and tragic backstories.

For a long, long moment, there was only silence on the Agrabah street. 

“What?” Tony choked.

“The Sultan ordered death,” Obadiah said again. Calmly. Dispassionately. 

He didn’t care, he didn’t  _ care— _

Tony took a step back, one hand ratcheting up to his chest, clutching at his shirt as something like panic erupted in his throat. They’d killed him, they’d  _ killed Stephen— _

Behind Tony, Peter drew in a breath that sounded more like a sob.

“No,” the boy murmured.  _ “NO!” _

Obadiah stepped forward, extending a placating hand. “Had I but known—”

_ “You bastard!”  _ Peter roared. He threw himself from behind Tony, who only barely found the strength to catch his collar before he did something stupid.  _ “YOU FUCKING BASTARD!” _

“Peter,” Tony coughed, trying to keep the tears from gathering, from spilling down his cheeks, “Peter please.”

The boy struggled, beating at Tony’s hand, clawing at where Obadiah stood in front of him with calm disinterest. His words turned to inarticulate snarling, his young face—so  _ young _ —flushed with fury and denial. 

“Peter,” Tony said again, and his voice broke. He pulled Peter toward him, hugging the boy in the only comfort he could give. 

Peter fought weakly in his arms, his snarls breaking to sobs. “No,” he hiccupped. “No, he promised me, he  _ promised…” _

Tony felt his chest cave in on itself, and bit down on his lip to keep the howl of refusal from ripping from his throat. 

This was his fault.

Allah, this was  _ all his fault _ —he’d brought the guards, he’d let them take Stephen, he’d run and he’d stalled them on the ratpath and they’d been too late,  _ too late.  _ He’d lied, he’d  _ used  _ the clever thief for his own gain, and then he’d killed him. 

_ Because of the calculation.  _

Tony should have known, should have realized—he’d never fit the calculation. 

Obadiah stepped forward, his hand still lifted, and his face twisted into an attempt at apology. Lies, lies,  _ lies _ . This man didn’t understand, didn’t deserve to understand.

Tony growled, low and dangerous, when Obadiah’s fingers extended toward Peter. 

“Don’t you dare,” he said, voice flat.

And Obadiah stopped, his fingers curling back into his palm, his hand dropping. 

Tony stepped away from Peter, keeping a hand firmly on the boy’s shoulder. 

He was never going to let go.

“This is what’s going to happen,” Tony said, and his voice was void of any emotion or inflection. It had all been devoured by the burning hole of guilt, of grief, ripping at his core. “You are not going to touch this boy. Ever. You are going to get him a job inside the palace, where he is provided for and safe. In exchange, I’m going to come with you peacefully.”

Peter started within his grip, turning a panicked, desperate face towards him. “What, no, you can’t—”

“Is that clear?” Tony said, not looking at the boy.

Obadiah gestured toward Peter. “He’s a streetrat—”

_ “Is that clear?” _

Stane sighed, throwing up a hand. “It’s clear,  _ your highness.”  _ With a quick gesture, the guards around the prison were flocking toward them, around them, their hands on their swords and their eyes alight with interest. 

“Tony, what are you doing?” Peter whispered harshly, his voice still saturated with tears.

“What he would have done,” Tony replied. 

He lifted a wrist to swipe quickly at his cheek, and swallowed hard. 

What the street rat would have done. What Stephen Strange would have done. Stephen who thought of himself as a burden, Stephen who hid his crippled hands in shame, Stephen who snapped at an innocent question. Stephen who apologized for it after, who read people and situations with ease, who brought the boy in trouble in the market to his home.

Tony would never know why. 

He felt like someone, something else was in his body, moving his feet. He’d been pulled violently out of his mind and shoved back in, and the fit wasn’t quite right anymore. 

_ I killed him.  _

That thought roared again and again and again within his mind as Obadiah led them silently back to the gates of the palace.

Again and again and again as Peter’s tears kept falling, as the kid shrunk against Tony when they entered the throne room.

Again and again and again when he looked up in broken indifference at his father.

Again and again and again with the connection of each blow, to the beat of each reprimand. To Peter’s helpless cries as he watched. 

Again and again and again as his form hit the floor. 

But he deserved this. 

He’d killed Stephen Strange.

* * *

 

There was supposed to be fire in hell. 

Everyone said Jahannam was supposed to be hot, to be the heart of the scorching desert sun, to be the place of punishment. Everyone said, and no one thought twice about it. 

But they’d got it wrong.

It was cold that was of Iblis, Stephen decided, twisting against the metal ring stinging his raw, bloody wrists. It was cold that dulled your thoughts and bit your skin and  _ hurt.  _ Warmth, heat, that was kind, that was home, even when it bleached you of all energy. 

Stephen had felt cold, of course; the water of the river came rushing from distant mountains, and the night wind could make him shiver. But this, this was Iblis’s cold, cold like that he’d never felt before, cold that ate at his entire form, creeping into his bones and making him long for the sunburn of the Agrabah streets.

He’d never been this deep in the dungeon before. He’d never breathed air this stale, leant against bricks that had never seen the sun.  _ Cold  _ air, bricks, body _.  _

The metal on his wrists forced his arms into contortions, and his shoulders ached with a deep bone-soreness. Stephen’s struggles didn’t help, but he couldn’t stand to be still. The moment he stopped moving, that hell temperature assaulted him relentlessly, and the shivering was worse than the twisting of his shoulders. 

The skin on his hands was the only part of him not recoiling from cold, but it was only because of the warm, scarlet blood he was leaking all over them.

His struggles didn’t help that either. With each twist, his shackles dug deeper into his wrists. The metal on his hands looped around an iron ring in the wall, and that was it; Stephen was left pinned against stone bricks that sucked every remaining semblance of warmth from his form. 

He could hardly move. 

And he was trying his hardest not to panic. 

A feeble orange glow cast the striped shadows of the barred door across his face, overlayed by distant firelight from somewhere behind the grate above him. Apparently, they stacked the cells, stringing them together like links on the ever-deepening chains of captivity. Stephen could hear the scrabbles and screams of rats and prisoners above him. The barred grate and door bounced the sounds straight to him, disorienting him with their echo.

At least he could see, he reminded himself. It could be worse; it could be dark, the guards could have done more than bruise his gut and hips, Peter and Tony could be stuck here with him. 

The other boys… where were they? Had they made it?

Ignoring the corroding fear pulling at his subconscious, Stephen assured himself they had. Peter was quick and clever, and Tony…

Well, Stephen had little doubt Tony had been leading the kid along the ratpath less than five minutes after they set out. 

Stephen smiled a bit, but it felt false and groping. The cold squeezed ever more questions into the front of his mind, trying to ignite his fear again. He twisted away from it, but the trailing temperature pressed up against him and so did his thoughts, his wonderings. 

How were they going to find him? How could they possibly find him, this deep in the layers of Jahannam? 

“Shit,” he whispered, and it bounced through the gloom like a tangible object. 

He didn’t even know where he was. How could they get to him if he couldn’t even sense the sun, how could they get him out—

Because he had to get out of here. He had to; this cold would kill him before hunger or thirst did. 

“Okay, Peter!” he called into the nothing, just to know something was there. Just to know he himself was there. “I miscalculated!”

Only rats and distant shrieks answered. 

Stephen strained at the ring around his wrists, wincing at the sting, at the cold air licking at the wound. His bandages were long since tattered, torn into non-existence by the misfitting hilt of the rapier they’d once been brothers with. 

Allah, he missed the sword. 

He’d missed it that day at the palace, watching the fencers add their music to the song spiraling through Agrabah. For almost a year, his shattered, useless fingers had itched for the smoothness of the home-fitting handle. The curve of the hilt that pressed to your palm and braced the backs of your fingers, the sound of the tip as it sliced through air, the glint of the blade and the skill of your movements…

The curve of the hilt that his hands didn’t fit, anymore. The sound of the tip as it sliced through air, the sound he couldn’t create anymore, the skill of the movements he couldn’t perform. 

Blood and grime collected in the grooves and against the winding ridges of his grotesque fingers. Stiff with cold, he couldn’t even touch the tips to his palms, let alone form a fist or attempt to slip from where the shackles pinned him. 

Let alone hold a foil, an epee, or a sabre. 

Stephen scrunched his toes against the stones of the floor, trying to shake feeling back into them, trying to shake the putrescent voice from his head.

_ There he goes again, so high and mighty. _

A particularly violent shriek ripped its way into Stephen’s cell, and he couldn’t help but flinch. More blood slipped onto his chains, and he thought he could almost taste its copper scent. 

_ He thinks he’s better than us, just ‘cause he can write and stitch a few cuts. _

“Shut up,” Stephen snarled. 

So close to what he’d said then. But of course, he’d followed that up with an insult, targeting his illiterate teammates with the utmost, hateful precision. Egging them on. 

He’d asked for it. 

_ What makes you so special? What makes everything about you, then? _

He’d thought they were his friends. They’d thought he hated them.

Stephen growled into the darkness.

_ It’s these hands, these pretty little hands. _

“SHUT. UP!” 

He was wrenching again, pulling at his wrists, for all he could focus on was those tendrils of whispers. And he needed his hands, he needed what was left of them to clap around his ears, to block the scathing voices. 

_ I bet he breaks like all the rest of us.  _

Stephen hissed, his struggles growing more animated. He wasn’t listening, he  _ wasn’t listening— _

_ Hold him down.  _

Fuck,  _ fuck,  _ it was so dark here, so cold, so empty and quiet and the dungeon walls were whispering, the torchlight was choking him, was shrieking at him, was—

Something skittered across his bare feet.

And suddenly Stephen was snapping into his form, just in time to instinctively kick out at the unfortunate creature touching him. The rat went flying, letting out a high-pitched scream before crashing, stunned, against the opposite wall.

“Oops,” Stephen said, guiltily crossing his feet. The cold skin of the ball of one foot brushing against the other sent a shiver up his form, and he quickly stood flat again. 

The rat struggled to its feet, and he could have sworn it glared at him. He didn’t blame it.

“Sorry,” Stephen found himself admitting. “I didn’t mean to kick you. I probably should thank you, instead.”

The rat twitched its nose, unimpressed. 

“I’m going to get out of here, you know,” Stephen told it. 

More nose twitching.

“I  _ am.”  _

The rat trotted into the corner of the cell, clamoring over a coil of rusting chain and settling atop it for a moment. 

“Yes, yes, I’m chained to a wall.” Stephen rolled his eyes. “The chains are unimportant in this calculation.” He pulled at them, again, but not enough to sting, just enough to make them clink lightly and add a bit of sound to this pressured silence. “The only thing that matters is my kid and a certain prince.”

The rat cocked its head. Well, Stephen assumed it did; all he could see was the gleam of its eyes listing slightly to the left.

_ You’re talking to a rodent. _

But that didn’t stop him from explaining, “I’m not exactly sure what to do with said prince. Is he my friend? I’m not…”

_ There he goes again, so high and mighty. _

“... exactly good at friends.”

But… that laugh, boundless and light and kind. And those clever hands, forming easy game pieces to pass the time, to have fun. And those honest words, hiding something so much  more broken, but honest all the same. 

The rat blinked.

“Shut up,” Stephen sighed. “Yes, fine, I want to call him my friend, a little too much. And he, both of them, are coming for me.”

“No they’re not.”

Stephen jumped, his chains slicing another line across the back of his wrists, and whipped his head around. A patter of feet was the only sign of the rat racing through the grate and away. 

A figure, features indistinguishable in the dim torchlight silluehting it, was leaning nonchalauntly against the bars of Stephen’s cell. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore a thick cloak wrapped tight around him and a calculating sort of air. His shadow fell dark across Stephen’s form and blocked the pitiful drift of heat the flicker of flame allowed.

Shivering, Stephen shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and brought his brows down into a glower. 

“Who,” he began, rolling his shoulders back and ignoring their aching complaints, “the fuck are you.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooof


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is salty, Peter is stubborn, and Kaecilius is Already Done.

The figure moved like a tiger, gliding across the hall to approach Stephen’s cell door. The torchlight fell lightly across his face, and Stephen sucked in a sharp breath.

He had no eyes.

No, he did--but the sockets and eyelids were painted with swaths of something dark and cracking. The effect was ghostly, not to mention the orange illumination, and Stephen tried not to shiver for reasons besides the cold. 

The man tapped, once, against the lock of the cell door. Something crackled, some strange shift in the atmosphere around them that Stephen couldn’t identify, but it made the hairs on his neck stand on end and his scarred fingers twitch. He opened his mouth to demand another explanation. And then the man pushed lightly on the hinges to send the door swinging open, and words were stolen from Stephen’s tongue.

“Hello,” said the figure, striding through the now gaping doorway.

“Do not come any closer,” Stephen said flatly, moving his wight over one foot in anticipation of having to defend himself. His hands curled as tightly as they could around the chains on his wrists. 

“Oh come on,” the man rumbled. “If I wanted you dead, you already would be.”

“Hm, where have I heard that one before? Oh right, from every manipulatory laborer and slaver stalking the ratpath roofs.” Stephen shook away the little voice that urged him fearfully to acquiesce, that told him what he’d just seen was magic, that he was no match for the robed mystery standing before him.

He probably wasn’t. 

“Do I look like a laborer or a slaver to you?” the man asked, his voice jumping between amused and irritated. 

_ You look like a sorcerer. _

The stories of magic weren’t all that uncommon. Myths about time twisters, air walkers, force changers, sand whisperers—it wasn’t unheard of. But Stephen didn’t believe the rumors. He didn’t believe in miracles.

Stephen pretended to study the man, before answering, “I think you missed the mark on that. My advice; loose the skull makeup.”

The man rolled his eyes beneath painted lids. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like “brilliant, the Cave chose a bastard,” before resuming his advancement across the cell. 

“Woah,” Stephen said, bouncing slightly on the ball of his foot, “I thought we talked about this, skull-face. Don’t come. Any closer.”

The man paused with exaggerated slowness, humoring Stephen. “I want to help you,” he said slowly, as though he was speaking to a child.

Stephen barked a laugh. “Ooo, I do know where I’ve heard  _ that  _ one before! Trying to make up for the eyes with an extra dose of bad explanations?”

The man glowered. “What, pray tell, would be an  _ adequate  _ explanation?”

“A name, for one.”

The man crossed his arms. “Kaecilius,” he said. 

Stephen raised an eyebrow. “Excuse you?”

“You can call me Kae, if it’s too complex for you.”

“What, do your friends call you 'Cili'?”

The man clenched his jaw, true annoyance flickering in his eyes, and Stephen allowed himself a bit of satisfaction. Step one; annoy the possible magician. Check. 

“So, Cili,” Stephen continued, “want to tell the truth about why you’re here?”

“I’m here to free you,” Kaecilius said. “In exchange for a favor, of course.”

“No can do, I’m afraid.” Stephen rubbed his wrists slowly against their shackles, swallowing. A drift of air brushed against his already freezing skin, and he shuddered involuntarily. “My rescue party’s already on their way.”

“Does your recall really extend so shortly into the past?”

“My recall doesn’t extend to bullshit.”

“You’re friends aren’t coming.”

Stephen watched him flatly. 

Kaecilius waited, fidgeting slightly when Stephen didn’t respond. “Did you hear me…?”

“My recall doesn’t extend to bullshit,” Stephen said again.

Kaecilius’s hands twitched at his sides, as though strangling something unseen. “You’re on your own,” he growled, his voice raising just slightly, frustration sliding in between his every syllable. 

“Again, mistaken,” Stephen said. “You underestimate the abilities of my kid and the new recruit.”

“Tony Stark?” Kaecilius simpered.

Stephen froze.

“And if you mean that curly-haired, agile little orphan brat, I can tell you I’m surely not underestimating ‘your’ kid.”

It took a long, long time for Stephen to draw a breath. 

“What happened,” he growled. “What did you do.”

“Me?” Kaecilius had the nerve to look offended. “Nothing. You’re groupies never made it past the dungeon doorway; they’re probably back at the palace, by now.”

_ No.  _ No, that couldn’t— 

Stephen yanked on his chains almost instinctively.

Tony’s bruises, his fear, his pain—he wasn’t supposed to go back, Peter was supposed to be safe. This wasn’t how the equation was supposed to have fallen together. Someone had screwed with the variables, and Stephen didn’t know what they were anymore.

“Listening, now?” Kaecilius murmured smugly.  
“Are they okay?” was Stephen’s only response. _“Are they okay?”_

Kaecilius shrugged. “The faster you get out of here, the faster you’ll be able to find out.”

Stephen swallowed the low, vicious snarl building in his throat and gathered his shredded self-control. “What do you need?”

Kaecilius smiled. “That’s more like it.”

* * *

 

“Who’s the child?”

The Sultan’s question was quiet, spoken only to Obadiah where he stood against the edge of the room. 

“Not sure,” Obadiah replied. He watched, expression tight, as the boy crouched almost desperately above his godson’s crumpled form. “He was your son’s bargaining chip to return without struggle. Is there a servant’s rank he would fit into?”

“Find him one,” was the Sultan’s response.

“Yes, my liege,” Obadiah said, dropping into a quick bow before advancing toward the boy. It wouldn’t be hard to integrate the kid into the palace’s cycle; they always needed more miscellaneous help.

Not that it would matter for much longer.

Obadiah swallowed his triumphant grin. He wondered how Kaecilius was doing with the third boy, how long until he could meet the man and his relic-chosen urchin at the Cave. Not long now, he assumed; if Kae was anything, it was quick.

As Obadiah crossed the throne room, the child snapped his head up, locking eyes. They were red and puffy, but utterly determined—almost feral in their intensity. Obadiah faltered for a single step. 

“Come on,” he said, jerking his chin. 

The child stood, slowly, stepping in front of Anthony’s curled, limp body. There was blood, this time—Obadiah would have to get that sorted, after he got rid of the child. 

The boy didn’t move, planting his feet and lifting his chin.

“That’s an order,” Obadiah said. “It’s your job, now, to follow them.”

The child shook his head.

Obadiah almost growled. Another stubborn  _ kid  _ for him to deal with; as if Anthony and the Sultan weren’t enough. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he explained with a sigh. “I’m simply going to find you your new occupation; it’s what he—” Obadiah indicated Tony— “specified.”

The child shook his head again.

“Oh for Allah’s sake—” Obadiah struck, his hand flashing out with practiced ease to seize the boy’s arm. Flinching away, the kid growled. Obadiah tried not to let his lip lift in disgust; the boy was practically an animal. Why had he let Anthony talk him into this, again?

Right. Obadiah’d had to tell them he’d killed his relic-chosen. 

He hadn’t expected Anthony to get so…  _ attached.  _ When Kae had suggested using the prince as a tracker, Obadiah had figured connection wouldn’t be a problem; Anthony was arrogant, impersonable, too clever for his own good, and not exactly trusting. 

But now there was a streetrat in the palace, standing protectively over his unconscious form.

_ You surprised me, Anthony. _

Obadiah pivoted, attempting to lead the child from the room. But the boy dug in his heels, ripping at Obadiah’s hand with sharp, dirt-covered fingernails. 

“No!” he snarled.

“Come  _ on,  _ you little—”

The boy’s voice rose. “I’m not leaving him!”

Obadiah rolled his eyes, bracing his feet on the tile floor and  _ hauling.  _ The child stumbled, his inertia finally breaking, a flash of pain dancing in his eyes as Obadiah’s hand tightened on his arm. This was a waste of time—he should be halfway to the Cave by now.

“Let go—I’m not leaving, he needs me— _ let me go!” _

The boy didn’t stop roaring until long after Obadiah had removed him from the throne room.

* * *

 

“So, let me get this straight,” Stephen said, rolling his wrists out before him. The still-oozing lacerations stung in the damp air. “You’re a sorcerer.”

“Yes.”

“And you became a sorcerer because of some magic necklace in a cave somewhere?”

Kaecilius glowered, Stephen’s newly-disconnected chains dangling from his fingers. “It’s not—fine, yes. Essentially.”

“And the magic necklace is picky, so only certain people are allowed to get to it and learn to do magic and shit.” Stephen’s feet had lost all feeling by this point; he bounced up and down, trying to shake strength back into his muscles.

“Yes.”

“And I’m one of those people.”

Kaecilius nodded.  

“I don’t believe you.”

Kaecilius’s eyes rolled toward the heavens, and he chucked the chains haphazardly toward the coil of metal links in the corner of the cell. “And  _ why not?” _

Stephen held up his hands, fully exposed but for a few clinging shreds of tattered bandages. They shook like dead leaves in a winter storm, the hideously pronounced scars wrapping and snagging across his skin and bones. 

“You think that matters?” Kaecilius raised an eyebrow.

“Of course it does.”

“You’re remarkably small-minded for a streetrat. It really doesn’t.”

Stephen opened his mouth, then closed it again. His gaze drifted down toward the bloody, disfigured limbs, remembering the power they’d once held, wrapped around the hilt of a rapier. 

Slowly, Stephen looked back toward the man, the sorcerer, standing before him. “You mean… I can do magic.”

Kaecilius nodded. “You will be able to.”

Stephen narrowed his eyes. “Why would you tell me this? Share this power?” Not for one moment did he think Kae didn’t have an ulterior motive. 

“The Cave, once a newly taught sorcerer leaves it, will not let that individual return. You had your opportunity to take advantage of the magic it contains; once you leave, you are not gifted with another chance. When I left… I failed to take advantage of everything I could have. I want you to bring something to me.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow. “Seems like an awful lot of work for gathering valuables.”

Kaecilius smiled, and his pupils practically slitted. “This isn’t just any valuable. I need a vial of the water.”

Stephen cocked his head. “The water? What’s so special about that?”

Kaecilius kept smiling. “You’ll know.”

Stephen shrugged, not pursuing the somewhat strange direction of conversation. Not that this entire conversation wasn’t strange; magic and curses in a gloomy dungeon as he nursed his aching body and mutilated wrists.

“So, what?” he asked instead. “I go into the cave, touch the magic rock, learn to twist time and control energy and stuff? Then find your hydration, get the hell out, give you the thing, and… continue on my merry way? As a  _ sorcerer?” _

Kaecilius nodded, shrugging a bit. “Pretty much.”

“Do I have to wear the stupid makeup?”

“It’s not—” the sorcerer drew a long, patient breath. “No,” he finally said, “you don’t.”

“Awesome.” Stephen rubbed his hands together, ignoring the way the blood smeared across his skin. 

“So,” Kaecilius asked, holding out a hand. “Do we have a deal?”

A thousand images splintered through Stephen’s mind like shards of a mirror; moments of his life and moments with Peter, and the few precious hours he’d had with the prince of Agrabah, who was so much more than he’d ever thought. 

_ They’re not coming.  _

Which meant he had to get to them.

Stephen took the hand.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, a new POV and some camels. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!! Leave a kudos or a comment to make my day, and I'll see y'all soon!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter. Camels. That is all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooops I got distracted by Good Omens and Calculus. Exclusively in that order. If you have not read Good Omens, DROP EVERYTHING AND READ IT RIGHT NOW. Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett. Two gays misplace the antichrist. It's the best thing ever.

Peter Parker was good at pretending to listen. He was good at nodding at the appropriate times, good at making affirming, meaningless noises. 

And he was good at climbing. 

Which was why he was now wedging his fingers into the cracks on the outsides of the palace spires, his kitchen uniform’s apron wrapping itself around his thighs, and pulling himself towards the highest window. 

Something told him that was where he needed to be. 

The wind was strong, and it threatened to take him with it as it whipped around the building. Peter gritted his teeth, clenching newly-cleaned fingernails into yet another chink in the palace’s armour. Hand over hand, his toes splayed against the wall, Peter climbed. His feet were bare, as he’d left the strange, soft wrappy-things—Stane had called them ‘slippers’—at the base of the palace.

Stane. Peter’s lip curled, and he pulled himself up onto another windowsill, crouching there a moment to catch his breath. 

That man was the first entry on his  _ people-to-be-punched  _ list. He’d just stood there—he’d  _ held Peter back— _ as that man, that  _ monster  _ of a man had hurt the prince. Stane had looked so disinterested, so unaffected, by the blows, by the bruises, by the  _ sounds.  _

That man had harmed Tony before. How many bruises had he given him? 

Peter pulled himself back to his feet and swung out over the wall again. He could see light in the top window, now, and he moved faster, scuttling up the wall as fast as his fingers could take him. He bunched up his useless apron, holding it in his teeth to keep it from tripping him as the wind grew ever-louder in his ears. 

Exhausted, Peter finally collapsed through the curtains of the window. He did not, however, collapse onto a cold tile floor as he expected.

He collapsed onto something soft and furry and  _ decidedly irritated.  _

Peter jumped up with a yelp, almost tumbling backward out of the window, as a hissing ball of fluff and fangs brandished its teeth at him. “Ah!”

“Dummy, what’s going— _ Peter?”  _

Peter’s gaze snapped to the back of the room, where Tony Stark, Prince of Agrabah, had half-attempted to get up. The boy’s knees were pulled up to his chest, his fingers gripping each other around his shins, his spine curled in complete defeat. 

Peter hastened into an awkward bow, dropping his apron and trying to decide what the hell he was going to do.

“Don’t—oh stop.” Tony grimaced, waving a half-hearted hand at him. Peter straightened. “What are you doing here?” the prince asked.

“Seeing if you’re okay,” Peter said, carefully stepping around the disgruntled animal he took to be a cat.  

“That’s Dummy,” Tony said, not-so-subtly avoiding Peter’s almost-question. “He doesn’t mean any harm.”

Peter cocked his head, surveying the spotted creature. It turned its head to face Peter, it slitted eyes surveying him back, and Peter thought it looked somewhat… brain damaged. “Isn’t that a bit disrespectful?” he wondered. Trotting across the room, he approached Tony’s slumped form. “The name, I mean. Isn’t it supposed to be revered, as a cat, or whatever?” 

Tony scoffed, but it sounded broken. “Have you  _ seen  _ that idiot? He’d probably light me on fire by accident, and he doesn’t even have thumbs.”

Peter looked at the unassuming mau, licking at its front paw while simultaneously overbalancing onto its right flank. “Okay yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Get used to it,” Tony said, that lick of arrogance returning. 

“Oh, I’m used to it,” said Peter. He picked his way across the rest of the room, taking in the cluttered tables and bits of rope and wood and metal. Intricate tools lay scattered in drawers and across the floor, even hanging from the ceiling in some places, and the whole area had an air of comfortable chaos. 

It was… homey, Peter decided.

So what if said decision was forced? Something had to be home, now that—

Swallowing, Peter carefully slid down next to Tony, who turned to face him. Up close, Peter could see the dullness of the prince’s eyes, so different from the clever spark he was used to. Dull eyes in his bruised and swelling face, above his bloody upper lip and nose. 

Carefully, Peter set a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“Why are you here, Peter?” Tony sighed. But he leaned into the hand slightly, and Peter got comfortable. 

“I said. To check on you.”

Tony let out a mirthless laugh. “Oh yeah, it’s going great here. Totally doesn’t hurt to breath, y’know.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said.

“Don’t be.” Tony tapped on his knees, his voice drifting into nothing but a murmur. “I deserved it.”

Peter’s hand squeezed down.  _ “Don’t say that,”  _ he snarled. What was it with his idiot teenagers, always blaming themselves for everything? “No one deserves to be hurt like that, least of all you.”

Tony’s face hardened. “Sure,” he said sarcastically. “Because I’m not a murderer or anything.”

“You’re  _ not  _ a murderer,” Peter insisted, both confused and appalled.

Tony jerked away from his hand. “I  _ killed  _ him, Peter!” he growled. “I killed your friend, your caretaker, I showed up and I just  _ broke everything  _ and I got you captured and now you’re  _ stuck  _ in this hellhole with me and—” The prince broke off, taking a shuddering breath and pressing his forehead to his knees. 

“No,” Peter said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Tony didn’t answer.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Peter said again, stronger this time. “It was… that man, Stane. It was his fault. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe he was just doing his job. Maybe it was no one’s fault. Hell, maybe it was my fault. But that’s not what matters, is it?”

Beneath his hand, Tony’s shoulder shuddered. 

Peter continued, “it matters… it matters… oh, I don’t know! It matters that at least I have you. It matters that I met you. It matters that… that Stephen… that he found someone more to save.” 

“No it doesn’t,” Tony whispered.

_ You’re right, _ part of Peter cried.  _ Nothing matters, anymore.  _

Stephen had taught him how to count. They’d been sitting together on the ledge of their home and watching the palace sprawl before them, watching the stars above them. Peter had nestled up to the older boy’s shoulder, yawing as he extended a finger to trace the patterns of the light, jabbing at each individually. 

_ ‘How many do you think there are?’  _ Stephen had asked.

Peter had looked at him quizzically.

_ ‘C’mon, take a guess. A thousand? A  _ million?’

_ ‘I wouldn’t know.’ _

Stephen had smiled.  _ ‘It’s easy. Just look—over there on that tower? There’s one window, right at the top. That’s one. And then there’s another below it. That’s two. And two more below that one, three and four.’ _

Peter was sitting within that window, now. 

His chest felt hollow, felt scooped out like the inside of a water gourd. He wished he could cry, wished he had more tears left to shed, more breath left to scream. But there was only void. 

He didn’t know if there’d ever be anything else.

But Stephen would have wanted there to be. So Peter was going to try—Allah preserve him, he was going to  _ try.  _

“Who was that man?” Peter wondered, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him with a thump. 

Tony didn’t look up, his voice muffled through his knees. It was shaking. “Who?”

“The one who hurt you.”

A bitter, broken laugh. “That? That would be Howard. The Sultan.”

_ No. _

“My father.”

Peter’s hand tightened on Tony’s shoulder. 

Try. He was going to try, he was going to try, he was going to—what if he couldn’t do this? Fuck, he didn’t know what to  _ do. _

_ Stephen, where are you? _

* * *

 

Stephen had never been this far out of the city. 

He’d never been out of the city, period, if he was being honest. But at a certain point, he’d stopped trying to contain his wide-eyed gawking as the dunes of the desert stretched out before him. 

The city paled to nothing before the vastness of the shifting dusk-colored landscape before him. Harsher, hotter, larger, more—Stephen couldn’t tear his gaze from the sharp line of the star-flecked sky meeting the sand. His hands pressed lightly to his camel’s hair, tangling within it, as the wind battered tiny grains of itching sand against his skin. Moonlight glinted in the creature’s beady eyes, dusting the tips of the dunes and casting the valleys in shadow. 

Kaecilius watched him with an exasperated sort of urgency. Occasionally, the sorcerer would clear a pointed throat to keep Stephen from drifting off-course, but the two of them stayed silent throughout the journey. 

It had been remarkably easy for Kaecilius to break Stephen out. No one had looked twice at the sorcerer, and Stephen would have thought it was the result of magic had a few guards not greeted him by name. Still not  _ precisely  _ sure what was going on, Stephen refused to keep his head down as they slipped out of the dungeon and then through the streets. They posed a strange pair: a ragged, bloody beanpole of a teen and a sweeping royal sporting far too much face paint. 

Stephen had come to the conclusion that Kaecilius had to be a royal, or at least royally employed. He had the air, the disposition only that class of people could afford to have—intelligent, ambitious, and comfortable with the power he knew he had. 

Well, most of that class of people. 

In so many ways, he’d never seen Tony Stark coming. 

The camel’s neck spasmed beneath Stephen’s fingers as the creature let out a long bellow, and Stephen jumped. That was another thing he’d never done;  _ ride.  _ He’d always rathered rely on his own two feet, thank you very much, but as the camel started up yet another towering dune, the perks were pretty obvious. 

“You know,” Stephen asked, breaking the silence, “if you can make portals, why are we riding  _ camels  _ to this Cave of Wonders?” 

Kaecilius turned, his face illuminated by the smooth orange flame between his hands. His own camel was darker, and larger, and Stephen had to keep kicking at his own to keep up with the towering beast. 

“I wouldn’t dishoner the Cave as such,” was the curt reply. 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Kaecilius ignored him, and Stephen rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the desert. 

He tried to keep his thoughts from drifting to Peter, to Tony, but as the rhythmic steps of the camel lulled away his strength, he found he couldn’t. He was nervous, ansty, and not simply because of the quest Kaecilius was leading him on (he wasn’t completely sure he even believed the man, yet; he’d save that decision for when—if—they found this ‘Cave’). Peter and Tony wouldn’t simply give up, even trapped within sprawling palace walls. They’d try to get to him. 

Would they?

Peter would. Tony, too. 

Stephen frowned. He’d known the prince for a day; why was he so confident in the fact that Tony’d risk everything to try to help him? 

Well, he wasn’t usually  _ that  _ bad a judge of character. 

Looking back at the horizon, Stephen wondered if this was what Tony wanted, what he’d dreamed of when he’d said he wanted to leave. This endless stretching world that bowed to no one and to nothing. 

Stephen glanced behind him, watching his camel’s footprints stretch toward the distant city. 

Would it ever be him, leaving footprints on the dunes of the desert? Did this precious, powerful world have room, have a plan and a purpose, for Stephen Strange? He used to think that it might. He used to lose sleep wondering what his footprint might be.

Now, pain stole his sleep away when he’d worked his hands too hard the day before. 

But sitting atop his camel and watching the stars light the peaks of the dunes, Stephen thought it was nice to dream. 

He glanced toward Kaecilius, taking in the hard profile in the unnatural orange glint of the sorcerer’s lamp. The magic seemed effortless; that light had never flickered throughout their entire trip, drifting untethered next to Kaecilius’s shoulder. 

_ What else can you do? And… will I be able to do it, too? _

It was nice to dream. 

Stephen let himself imagine the magic wreathing his fingers, pulsing within him. Let himself imagine holding,  _ weilding  _ power again as he lept between locations instantly. He could be lethal again, he could be strong again, he could be worth something again.

His camel let out another bellow, startling him slightly, but not as much as when an answering holler rang out through the valley of sand. Stephen glanced questioningly at Kaecilius, who kicked at his camel—Stephen’s had to trot to catch up—and swerved down through the valley. “We’re getting close,” said the sorcerer. 

“Who was that?” Stephen asked.

“My… comrade,” Kaecilius answered, his tone more than a bit sardonic.

Stephen eyed him suspiciously. “You have a comrade?”

“Against my will, yes. He’s not a sorcerer.” Kaecilius watched him, something indecipherable in his gaze. “At least not yet.”

They rounded the edge of the monstrous dune, and the sand leveled out before them. Stephen could see the silhouette of a figure atop yet another camel, but spared Kaecilius’s companion nothing but a glance; he had eyes only for the cave behind them.

He’d been expecting a ominous opening into the earth, a yawning hole or cracking fissure; not this. Not this breathing, roaring,  _ singing  _ mouth, shaped like the head of a beast, with glistening orange eyes that locked onto Stephen. He was struck paralyzed, the earth beneath him shifting, rumbling—or perhaps it was only inside him, the buzzing of his bones as some force wrapped around his core. 

This was not a cave. 

This was a door. 

And Stephen knew, undoubtedly, that somehow this was  _ his  _ door.

He swallowed, sand scraping down the inside of his throat. 

“How has no one…” he began.

“It is hidden without the proper enchantment,” Kaecilius explained, kicking at Stephen’s camel to force it to continue. 

Stephen could form no more questions, and the two of them trudged the final distance to the rearing mouth in awestruck silence. 

“Took you long enough!” called the new figure. His voice was low and drawling—Stephen instantly disliked him. “And I thought I was going to be late.”

Late? They’d… scheduled this? Scheduled his  _ rescue?  _

That made very little sense.  

But this whole thing made very little sense, and all of Stephen’s rational thought was being consumed by the eyes of the Cave. 

Kaecilius dismounted, and Stephen followed suit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sorcerer approach the other camel, but kept his own gaze on that of the Cave. He had little choice.

Conversation drifted past his perception, seeming distant. His ears were ringing. His veins pounded with an inescapable  _ something  _ that pulled at his mind, shredding his concentration. He felt young and old and young again, remembered things he’d long forgotten, remembered things he hadn’t yet experienced, and before he realized, he was moving. 

The sand shifted against his feet, and he lost his balance. He threw out a bloody hand to steady himself. To his shock, he’d grown close enough for it to brush against the upright craig that was one of the teeth of the beast, hot and cool and rough and smooth all at the same time. Stephen hastily raised his hand hand—it left a dusted orange mark against the blueish stone.

Deep within the cave, deep within the beast’s throat, a light flickered. 

“Wait—boy!” came an urgent voice from behind him. 

Fighting through his suddenly drunken haze, Stephen looked behind him. 

Kaecilius trotted toward him, stopping a few feet away. He flipped Stephen a cork-topped vial, then quickly retreated. “Remember! The magic answers to you; it  _ chose  _ you. We’ll be waiting when you come back.”

Stephen nodded distantly. Then he turned and stepped into the cave, his feet thudding on the hard stone steps. 

If he had looked behind him one more time, he would have seen Obadiah Stane remove his hood and test the tip of the knife that slid out of his sleeve. 

  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow, we die. So here's some more before it happens.

The echo of Stephen’s footsteps on the steps of the Cave’s throat formed a rhythmic beat like the pounding of a second heart. His thoughts slowed to match the cadence, words forming in almost lyrical structures, and Stephen could vaguely sense a clenching in his gut. He pushed it away. 

_ Circle for sky and square for strife. _

His hands twitched at his sides, mangled fingers curving into shapes. 

_ Oval for the powder and curve for the knife.  _

His breaths were slow and even and he closed eyes, letting his mouth drift shut. 

_ Sharp for the future and slow for the past. _

The Cave’s breaths were slow and even and it closed its eyes, letting its mouth drift shut.

_ Thrust for the shield and cross for— _

_ Let him go. _

Stephen shook his head, trying to clear out the voice that spoke out of rhythm, breaking the cadence, breaking the magic. 

_ Cross for the— _

_ Enough! _

He didn’t recognize that voice, that scream—

_ The fencer is mine. _

_ Never. I gave you the chancellor, but you will not have this one. _

Stephen started, the beat of his steps faltering. The strange second voice, lighter and quicker, as though it was only stealing words, turned its attention to him. 

_ I’ve been waiting for you. _

“The  _ fuck—”  _

Stephen tried to take a step back, but his heel caught the ledge of the next step. His head cracked against the Cave’s suddenly hard, unforgiving walls as he fell, no amount of flailing arms able to steady him. 

“Ugh…” He groaned, fighting upright and raising a hand to feel the back of his head. A lump, but nothing worse; Stephen shook out his aching wrists, still covered in dried blood, and shakily stood. “What was that…” 

There was no answer, neither from the pressure of the Cave or the Other that had wrapped its talons around Stephen’s mind. He shivered, running his hands through his hair and shaking the clinging grains of sand from his scalp. Nervousness found root in his gut. 

Stephen looked around him, really  _ looked,  _ for the first time, his shoulders tensing as he went on the defensive. The cave was dark, and strangely damp; there was water collecting on the walls around him. He could see the glimmer of the dim light on its surface. Leaning in close—one never took moisture for granted—Stephen peered at the droplets as they coalesced. 

And found them running  _ upward. _

“Oookay,” Stephen said, quickly retreating a meter. “This place is weird. Undeniably not-natural.”

A breath of wind ruffled his hair, coming from the glow of the bottom of the stairwell. 

Almost as though the Cave was laughing.

Stephen swallowed thickly, and suddenly all he wanted to do was sprint back up those steps as quickly as he could. But he couldn’t keep his eyes off the faint orange light reaching pleadingly toward him from lower throat. 

“Hello?” Stephen called, descending a few more steps.

Nothing.

“I’m insane,” he finally muttered. “Stephen, you’ve officially gone nuts. It’s a  _ staircase,  _ for Allah’s sake. And you’ve been ignoring the voices in your head for years.”

But these were new voices. And they were much, much more difficult to shake away. 

“Is anybody there?” he called out again, on the off chance that the creepy mindsong would return. 

But again, there was only the stuffy cave air and silence. Stephen moved forward again, repeating  _ ‘it’s fine, relax’  _ as though the thought would make him feel any less  _ wrong.  _

_ It’s fine. Relax. _

He varied the rhythm of his steps anyway.

The glow at the end of the stairwell grew steadily larger, and Stephen’s uneven steps grew quicker. Wind, or maybe whispers, drifted up past him, and the moisture on the walls grew thicker. Droplets formed rivulets and rivulets formed streams, drawing close on the edges of the walls until there were rushing surfaces of gravity-defying water on either side of Stephen. The orange light glistened his face and on the tips of the whitewater waves. 

It was sudden, when the walls dropped away and Stephen stepped into the cavern at the heart of the Cave of Wonders. 

The blinding shine around him had him squinting and shielding his gaze, and the rumble of the moving water had his ears ringing. Impatient to see, Stephen blinked the glow out of his rapidly-adjusting eyes and moved forward, his hands outstretched for balance on the uneven surface beneath him. His breaths took in wet, clean air. 

As his hands fell away from his face, Stephen almost lost his balance completely. 

It was incredible. No, not incredible; it was  _ magical.  _

The water ran upward in arcing streams, pouring in floor-to-ceiling waterfalls, insofar as you stood on the ceiling and watched them come toward you. Sheets of water formed curving, rippling curtains and marked the borders of sprawling double and triple spirals. The crystal droplets refracted light in ripples on the walls. It was if the water itself was glowing; rushing rivers of pure, luminescent gold. 

And between the falls, hanging in the air like hawks on a desert thermal, were disks of woven light as gold as the water. Threads of energy, of  _ magic,  _ darted through each other in concentric circles, threaded with symbols and glyphs that Stephen couldn’t read, but that called into his consciousness all the same. They spun, slowly, in the whispering wind. 

Stephen stood on a craggy outcropping of stone jutting from the base of the stairwell, halfway up the cavern wall. He was just far enough from the upward-running water that it rushed by his outstretched fingers without touching, and the floor was a distant source far below. 

Something told Stephen that wouldn’t be a problem as he turned to the nearest mandala of magic. It was slightly beneath his perch, off to the left, and he examined it carefully.

Under his gaze, it froze. 

And then they all did, stilling and hanging in midair like the weightlessness at the apex of a jump. Stephen grinned.

Carefully, he made his way to the edge of the rock and knelt, swinging his legs over the side. Beneath him, the mesh of glowing wires lit the bottoms of his feet in gold. Bracing his arms on the rock beside him and sucking in a breath, Stephen stretched his legs toward the platform and eased his weight into his hips.

They slipped.

In a flash, all of his weight slammed into his bloody wrists and hands, and the weak, twisted fingers automatically curled inward to protect themselves. Pain skittered up Stephen’s ulnae as he lost his grip, plunging uncontrollably downward. 

It wasn’t far, but there was still a moment of freefall where Stephen’s heart shattered into his throat. He slammed onto the mesh platform and rolled on instinct, distributing the shock. 

He came out of the fall far nearer to the edge of the magic than he would have liked. Breathing hard and trying to get his adrenaline back under control, Stephen dropped a hand toward the light supporting him. His fingers slipped through the mesh. The threads of magic were slightly sproingy against his skin, but pleasantly warm—he found himself spreading his aching fingers over the platform, wrapping his joints around the thin wires. 

The wires wrapped around him. Stephen looked down sharply as the magic curled softly around his hands, almost curious. 

Not yet  _completely_ comfortable with being felt up by threads of light, Stephen brought his hands back up to his chest and turned his attention toward the next platform. It wasn’t much further down, but he would have to leap a bit to get there.

That didn’t prove as troubling as the first drop had been, and Stephen had soon found a rhythm of sliding and jumping between the disks of magic. His toes and fingers gripped the wire, his clothes soaked from the spray of the waterfalls, and his eyes still blinked out the soft golden light. 

Peter would love this.

Pausing for a moment on the third-to-last platform, Stephen looked back toward the shadowed gap that was the doorway back to the stairwell. Peter’s chestnut hair would glow as gold as the waterfalls in the light, Stephen thought, running a hand through the soggy locks dripping  _ up  _ the back of his neck. 

Tony would take care of the boy, Stephen told himself. For the hours that he’d been gone, that he would be gone, Peter was safe. 

It was the prince Stephen was worried about.

He slipped down onto the next platform, flexing his hands. The golden light accentuated the grooves and twists of the deformations, casing the skin in a sickly sort of shadow. They didn’t look human.

Stephen turned his gaze back to the cave, watching the water splatter upward against the ceiling, spray against gravity, defy all of nature’s rules. Abruptly, he remembered the vial in his pocket; Kaecilius had desired some of this magical liquid.  

When Stephen shook out his hands, the water that flicked from them fell upward. 

He lept the final steps to the floor of the cavern, the stone cold against his heels and toes. Wasting no time, he trotted toward the thin, curving sheet of water, reaching out toward its spraying, crystalline surface. 

It caught against his fingers, throwing long wakes up toward the ceiling. The stream parted around his hand, letting him see into the next curve of the spiral, cleaving the wall of light in two.

A laugh startled out of Stephen, and he retracted his hand. His feet took him along the curve of the waterfall, slowly at first, and then he was sprinting through the path of the spiral. He threw out both arms, fingertips grazing the falls around him, and water lept energetically upward. It looked like pure, concentrated sunlight.

Stephen took great gulps of the moist air, feeling it settle warmly within his chest. He sprinted ever faster, hardly even feeling the burn of his muscles as he traveled through the spiral’s curves, leaping through the walls of water every so often. The water washed away the sand that coated him, the dried blood crackling along his skin, the grime of the dungeon and the streets. Soaked and smiling, Stephen felt pressure growing against his mind as the path grew sharply circular.

He didn’t realize there was something other than stone on the floor ahead of him until he was stepping on it.

Stephen’s foot slapped down onto a wet, soft surface, and he was snapped back into his body with a bump. He backtracked hastily, blinking water out of his eyes and trying to identify what slimy thing he’d just come in contact with.

But there was only a somewhat dejected looking piece of fabric lying abandoned across the stones. Stephen couldn’t identify its color, what with it being so wet and reflecting the light. The water rippled strangely across its surface, almost as if the surface itself was doing the rippling, and Stephen curiously pulled it from the floor.

The wet ground released it with a sucking  _ pop,  _ little droplets of metallic water splattering onto the ceiling as Stephen shook the fabric out. It was  _ heavy;  _ saturated with liquid, yes, but the material must be high quality to have this sort of feel in Stephen’s hand. He prodded at the thing until he found a corner, and then two, trying to identify its shape.

The fabric, on the other hand, had  _ other ideas. _

One moment, Stephen was exploring the folds of a limp mess of abandoned garment, and the next, the garment was exploring  _ him. _

Fabric wrapped itself around his wrists, the corners he’d just been holding rising up in front of him. The only thing Stephen could consciously think was suddenly  _ possessed bedsheet!  _ and he let out a squawk that was somewhere between confusion and terror.

Fold after fold rippled up before him, the  _ thing  _ raising threatening corners, swaying in powerful shapes—

And at the top, two sharp collars popped vertical and shook themselves like cat’s ears.

Stephen stared.

The cloak—for it was a cloak—shivered, dislodging more water and spraying no small amount of it into Stephen’s face. He grimaced, still trying to keep this demonic thing in his view.

It cocked its collar, and Stephen realized in a surreal moment that it was  _ imitating him. _

“What the fuck.”

The cloak-thing bobbed with a sort of energy Stephen could only describe as happy. It was floating, he realized vaguely, hanging suspended in the air like those platforms at the edges of the cavern. 

Okay, so, magic again.

Cool.

No, not cool,  _ no one had told him sorcerer's could bring inanimate objects to life what the hell— _

The cloak-thing circled him, nudging at his arms, his neck, his ass, like some sort of curious child. Stephen slapped it away, still definitely uncomfortable with being felt up by mystical objects. The thing backed off, looking apologetic.

No, a piece of fabric could not look  _ apologetic. _

This one did.

Now that it was a little less wet, Stephen thought he could identify the cloak as somewhat of a reddish color—it was probably quite stunning in the sunlight. The surface facing him had a checkered sort of pattern, lighter in alternating squares. The whole thing was a patchwork of uniquely embroidered fabrics, adored with two sparkling clasps that feathered out from its lapels like extended wings.

It was beautiful.

And it was  _ looking at him. _

“Um, hi,” Stephen said lamely. “I’m Stephen Strange?”

The cloak lifted one of its corners, waving a greeting. Sentient, then—this was getting weirder and weirder. 

“A living cloak, then?” Stephen asked somewhat obviously. 

The garment looked unimpressed.

“A Cloak?”

It bobbed in satisfaction.

Stephen thought, thus far, he’d been doing a remarkable job taking everything in stride. Meeting a prince, being captured, having a rat save him from a panic attack, having a sorcerer break him out of prison, descending into a magical, talking cave, and now this?

Thinking about it that way, he supposed a floating Cloak wasn’t really _ that  _ life-changing. 

“No offense,” he said out loud.

The Cloak looked confused.

“Nevermind,” said Stephen, edging down the path again. There was still an urging pressure in his mind, reminding him that he had a purpose here, a mission. “I’m actually looking for something… some rock?”

The Cloak perked its collars and zipped out before him, turning toward the waterfalls. It waved a corner at him in the universal beckoning motion, then floated off through the spiral.

And that was how Stephen came to following a levitating Cloak around the last curve of the spiral, wet with golden water and filled with some wordless call of  _ faster, faster fencer,  _ **_faster_ ** .

He was met with somewhat of a confusion.

The Cloak hovered proudly within a perfectly spherical wall of upward-rushing liquid. Lying beneath it, decidedly anticlimactically, was a small, jagged table of uncarved rock. 

And strewn on it like an abandoned chess piece lay a necklace.

* * *

 

“Now?”

“Not yet. He’s different.”

“It could be bad different, like the chancellor.”

“That wasn’t the deal, and besides. I think he’s the outcome.”

“You think the Eye bargained for  _ this?” _

“I don’t know. We’ll see, I suppose.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Endgame's tomorrow.  
> Yupppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp okay I'm fineeeeeee I'm FINE it's all gonna be FINE...
> 
> Apropos of that, I am 100% certain I will need to fix the events that occur in the wonderful movie we get tomorrow. Make no mistake; I will love the original, and I will cry, and I will memorize every word, but I will also have Things to Say about Certain Characters and the Happy Endings that they deserve. 
> 
> So I will probably write a fix it. A very longggggggggggggggg fix it. This guy'll probably be slow going for a while...
> 
> Anyway, enough blabbering. See you soon! (Or not. Cuz I might be dead.)


	10. Chapter 10

Kneeling, Stephen extended a hand toward the necklace, trying to identify what, exactly, was patterned on its surface. Brass and gold lay twisted in front of a bowed, almond-shaped platform—like an eye, but interwoven with rods and wires. A chain looped off the edges, trailing over the rock that supported it and cascading onto the wet ground. 

“This?” Stephen said, his hand pausing as he turned toward the Cloak. “Are you sure?”

The Cloak spread its corners wide, as if to say, _do you see anything else?_ _  
_ “I suppose you’re right…”

Looking back at the necklace, Stephen sighed, then gripped it without any ceremony.

Abruptly, the whisper in his head silenced. The Cloak froze.

And nothing happened. 

Stephen frowned, scooching closer. He lifted the jewelry off its pedestal—the Cloak flinched again— and extended the chain between both of his hands to peer at the amulet between them. It swung lazilly back and forth before losing momentum and coming to stillness.

“Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do?” Stephen said somewhat helplessly, turning his gaze to the Cloak. Kaecilius had told him to touch the relic, that it would bring him the magic he’d promised.  _ He’d promised— _

The Cloak drifted closer, prodding at the necklace. The moment its hem came in contact, it shivered and quickly spooled itself back in, shaking its collar at him.

“Why is it working for you?” Stephen demanded. He stood, winding the chain around his wrist and clutching the amulet in his scarred palm. “What did I do, what’s wrong with me?”

There was a sinking sort of foul disappointment in his gut, failure twisting its claws around his heart. 

It had been so nice to dream, to think that maybe he could have something more to his name and his continued existence then broken fingers and a stolen loaf of bread. That maybe he was worth something. Worthy of something, of someone. 

Growling, he pried at the metal with the edges of his dirty fingernails, trying to get some leverage to force the thick wire bands to move. But his fingers shook to hard to grip the dainty curves. 

The Cloak bent over, and Stephen could tell it was confused as it looked at his hands. 

“Not much of a swordsman anymore,” he said to it, not caring if he sounded as desperate as he felt. 

This was supposed to fix it, supposed to give him purpose again. The magic was supposed to be something beautiful and dangerous that he could control, another sabre, another rapier. The clothing he could wear to walk, head high, on the streets, not clamoring above and beside them. It was supposed to save him.

It was supposed to protect them.

Stephen tried to clamp down on the thoughts as they clawed their way into his consciousness, but he was tired and hungry and terribly, terribly alone in this alien world. He’d wanted to see the look on Peter’s face when he lit their home with golden light for the first time. He’d wanted to climb next to the kid on the ratpath, stepping through the air on platforms of woven wires. He’d wanted to see Tony smile, stepping out of a portal to anywhere he wanted to go.

He’d wanted to be something, do something, be  _ someone  _ that a prince might—

“Stop,” he growled, lifting a hand to swipe at his cheek. “You’re being stupid.”

The Cloak floated back sharply, and Stephen glanced at it.

“Sorry,” he said. “Not you, I was just…”

Somehow looking distinctly uncomfortable, the thing floated over to him and patted his shoulder slowly. Stephen chuckled brokenly.

“Thanks.” He patted the Cloak in return. “At least there’s you.”

Hems perking, the Cloak nodded emphatically. Stephen laughed again, a little stronger this time.

He asked, “has this really never happened before?”

The Cloak shook its collars, and Stephen sighed. He clambered back to his feet, looking at the amulet in his hand. 

Then he stuffed it in his pocket. 

The Cloak’s collars skewed as it cocked its head, vibrating somewhat anxiously, and Stephen beckoned. “C’mon, we might as well get out of here. But first…”

He supposed he still had his end of the bargain to hold. 

Fishing the vial out of the pocket where it was clinking with the useless relic, Stephen pulled the stopper away and trotted over toward the waterfall. After a moment of thought, he held the thing upside-down and watched the liquid splash into it in a froth of golden bubbles. Capping it and stepping back, Stephen shoved it back into his pocket. Maybe he was plundering, maybe he was unwelcome, but Stephen couldn’t seem to make himself care. 

“Let’s go.”

* * *

 

“What in Agamotto was that?”

“He’s the one.”

“I can’t believe— _ this  _ lovestruck teenager?  _ He’s  _ the power the Eye is resting in?”

“Potential comes in all forms.”

_ “Apparently.” _

“Do not be threatened, my friend. We always knew there’d be one with more power than any of us, the one who could resist the Cave’s call.”

“I liked the look of the chancellor better, just saying. … Stop  _ grinning  _ at me, that was supposed to be blasphemous.”

“It was blasphemous, if you had meant it. But anyway, it doesn’t matter who we think is worthy; only who the Cave and Eye chose as their…”  
“Their what?”

“I don’t know. The time has never come to pass before, and there is no term for what these men—”

“Man and boy—”

“—have become.”

“What should  _ we  _ call them, then? We have to refer to them as something.”

“Hm. I do wonder what he would look like with his power, with the spells in the air around him and the Cloak on his shoulders.”

“Dramatic as hell, probably. … You’re laughing at me again.” 

“Imagine it, though. What  _ is  _ this boy the Eye has chosen? What is he to us, to the Eye, to the world?”

“A champion?”

“... Hm. Yes. A champion.”

* * *

 

Stephen threw his torso up onto the rock ledge, keeping his fingers curled for protection, and hauled himself up from the spinning golden platform with a grunt. The Cloak bobbed behind him, and Stephen had the distinct sense that it was gloating as it preened at its clasps with the points of its collar.

“I remind you,” he said, rolling awkwardly onto his back, “that not all of us are weirdly-animate, levitating capes.”

It bristled, but Stephen refused to apologize. If it was going to watch him drag his way back up through the Cave inch by inch, he could damn well refer to it with racist garment-slurs.

Rough edges and sharp lumps dug into the skin on Stephen’s back, still soft from the moist air of the cavern. He let himself lay there, just for a moment. The weight of the amulet in his pocket had the edge of his coat spilling onto the rocks beside him, the useless thing far lighter than he’d expected. 

A moment stretched to two.

He wondered if the sun had begun its ascent yet, wondered if the desert had turned to flame while he lay beneath it. Allah, it had been such a long day, and here he was on a hard stone stairwell with nothing to show for it but dried blood and a worthless necklace. 

Two moments stretched to three. 

Something wet and soft nudged at Stephen, and he opened eyes he hadn’t realized had slipped shut. Red fabric undulated in his vision, and he reached out to stroke it.

The Cloak froze against his touch. Then, slowly, it wrapped its arms around his fingers, carefully cradling them in silky coolness. Stephen curled around himself, his strength seeping away into the rocks as the Cloak explored the defects of his hands.

Three moments stretched to five. 

And on the cold, rough stone of the stairwell, Stephen Strange slipped into unconsciousness.

* * *

 

_ “MaMa, tell me a story?” _

_ The silver-haired woman laughed, shifting in the curves of her throne. The movement of her knees bounced the boy on her lap. “It’s long past sundown, Maslih.”  _

_ “Aw…” The boy pouted, pulling his legs up to his chest to further claim his place on his mother’s thighs. “Please, MaMa?” _

_ “Hm…” The woman smiled slightly, carding her fingers through the boy’s hair. “What do you think, Habibi?” _

_ On the sprawling elephant throne beside them, a man leaned forward onto his knees to peer at them fondly. His turban sat in a knot of silken fabric on his lap, though the plume of a peacock feather was still tucked behind his ear. “As long as you tell my favorite story, I wonder what harm a little longer awake could do our little tinkerer.” _

_ The boy beamed, looking eagerly toward the kind face above him. _

_ “Very well,” the woman chuckled. “In the darkness between the stars hovered a butterfly.” _

_ “Wait,” objected the boy. “Where’s the ‘long ago’?” _

_ The man shook his head, a grin dusting his harsh face, dulling the lines to something tender. “No ‘long ago’ for this story. This tale is outside time, outside the sunrise and the sunset. It is happening now, and never, and it will far in the future.” _

_ The boy cocked his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.” _

_ “It will,” the woman said. “Someday. Now, do you want me to continue?” _

_ “Yes, please. Sorry, MaMa.” _

_ “In the darkness between the stars, a butterfly hovered on wings of emerald and watched the fates of the world. It watched births and deaths, watched the wise and the foolish, watched the rich and the poor. It watched people, all people, and it wondered why they were down there while it was so high, the stars hot against its wings.” _

_ “It sounds lonely,” said the boy, his voice thoughtful. _

_ “That it was,” the woman replied. “So when it saw the human and its heart first filled with something hot and overwhelming, it was terrified.” _

_ “That’s love, right?” The boy tapped his fingers on the armrest of the throne, and his mother folded her own around them to calm him. “It is? The butterfly fell in love?” _

_ “Yes. And it was scary, but it was also beautiful. And the butterfly soon found that it relished this feeling—it loved it. _

_ “But that was not all it loved.” The woman smiled. “It loved a boy of sand and sky, of frost and embers, of storms and smoke. It loved the way he laughed, the way he cried, loved every crack and scar and every skill and goal. From its place among the stars, it watched him grow. _

_ “And when the boy grew into a lonely young man, a survivor, the butterfly lost its grip on the heavens; it had fallen too far already, and there was no going back. It plunged down, only the power of its turquoise wings keeping it in control. Down and down it went, imagining what would happen when it touched the ground for the first time, when it touched the survivor for the first time. But the winds of the world and the sands of time tore at it as it fell—they knew it was starcome, starborn, and they feared it. _

_ “When the butterfly finally touched the earth, it was with a crash against unforgiving ground, for the world had ripped its great wings ragged.” _

_ The boy exploded upward in the woman’s lap, the top of his head almost colliding with the woman’s chin. “Oh no!” he yelped. “They heal, right? They do?” _

_ The man in the far throne shook his head, running a hand through the plumes of the peacock feather. “Wings don’t heal.” _

_ The boy shook his head stubbornly. “But the butterfly  _ liked  _ flying!” _

_ “Yes,” the woman said, “it did. And when it found its wings irrevocably damaged, it was desolated.” _

_ “What does that mean?” wondered the boy. _

_ “Very, very sad,” the woman clarified. “It was sad it would never be able to fly again. It was sad it could never go home. And it was sad because without its wings, it felt worthless. What would the survivor think of it now? Surely, he could never love something so destroyed.” _

_ The boy surged up again. “No! You’re telling it wrong! The man’d  _ have  _ to love the butterfly—he flew all the way to earth for him. His wings were all ripped up for the survivor in the first place!” _

_ The woman glanced toward the man with the feather, her brows furrowing ever-so-slightly. “‘He?’” she said. _

_ The boy looked at her with wide eyes. “Oh. Was the butterfly a girl?” _

_ On the far throne, the man smiled. The woman looked down at her son and did the same, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “He could be a boy, if you’d like.” _

_ “Well,” said the boy, “tell the story like it really is. Y’don’t have to change it for me.” _

_ “I won’t,” the woman assured. “Where were we? Ah, right. The butterfly was very ashamed, but it knew it had to go and find the survivor; he was the only one who could help it. He was the only one who would understand. So it began to travel the vast sands, keeping its wings folded protectively. It didn’t know how far it would have to go, and it feared that when it got to him, the survivor and his city would turn it away in disgust.” _

_ “But they don’t!” _

_ “Shh,” the woman chided, before continuing. “On the way, it met a proud, kingly lion. This lion had golden fur and a mane the color of the night sky, and when it saw the butterfly, something erupted in its heart, too.” _

_ The boy wondered, “the lion fell in love with the butterfly?”  _

_ “It fell in a dark, twisted sort of love not for the butterfly, but for the power of the stars it held within it. The kind of feeling that grows when love has festered, when time or events have ripped away the connection between people. The lion saw the butterfly, and it  _ wanted  _ it, more than it had ever wanted anything before. And what the lion wants, it gets. _

_ “It bowed to the butterfly, inviting it to the oasis for water and rest. The butterfly, exhausted in body and in soul, accepted.” _

_ The boy’s fingers tightened on the armrests. _

_ “‘Where do you come from?’ the lion asked, its voice grating like the sands.” The woman dropped her voice to a low growl, then lifted it again as she told the butterfly’s reply. _

_ “‘The sky,’ replied the butterfly. ‘But it would never let me go back. Nowhere wants me.’ The lion was encouraged by this, and said, ‘you could stay here, with me.’” _

_ The boy interrupted. “Never! He has to find the survivor—you said the survivor was lonely. The butterfly has to help—” _

_ The woman shushed him again. “The butterfly thanked the lion for the offer, but refused. It said it was on a quest, that it couldn’t stay.  _

_ “‘You must be tired,’ said the lion, not ready to give up yet. ‘Stay the night, I implore you.’ This, the butterfly did accept. Quickly, the lion lifted a few pawfuls of sand, hollowing a place in the oasis for the butterfly to sleep. _

_ “But when the butterfly crawled within, the lion pawed again, this time to fill the cave it had created. As the sand showered down around its wings, the butterfly realized how the lion had tricked it, betrayed it. It tried to climb the steep walls of the hollow, but the grains slipped beneath its feet as its wings beat uselessly. Sand pinned it against the clay of the oasis. The last thing it saw was the lion’s triumphant golden eyes in a sea of indigo fur before the sand swallowed it up.” _

_ The boy shivered, drawing closer to the woman who held him. He whimpered softly, and the woman stroked his hair. _

_ “With sand in its blood and its throat and its soul, the butterfly could do nothing but close its eyes. It knew, though, that this was not the end. That it would dream of safe skies and a storm-and-smoke smile. That its survivor was still out there, somewhere. That it was a survivor too.” The woman leant back against the chair, hugging the boy to her. _

_ “You tell that so beautifully,” said the man, standing up and trotting over to them.  _

_ But the boy was not satisfied. “And then what?” he demanded. “How does the butterfly get out? What does the survivor say? How is the lion punished—” _

_ “No one knows,” the man said.  _

_ “The story has never been told beyond that point,” the woman said. “Not even just made-up.” _

_ “Why not?” The boy looked confused.  _

_ “Because there’s  _ so much  _ left to happen,” the man explained, kneeling next to the boy and offering him his hand. “It’s up to each of us.” _

_ “Up to me?” _

_ The man smiled. “Up to you.”  _

_ The boy’s face hardened into a determined frown. “The butterfly will free itself. It will,” he said, as if justifying the words.  _

_ “I believe you,” the woman assured.  _

_ “But you, Anthony Stark,” said the man, scooping the boy off his mother’s lap, “are long past your bedtime. Time to make like the butterfly and not like the lion; MaMa can tell more stories tomorrow.” _

_ “Before my studies?” the boy said hopefully, squirming in his father’s arms. _

_ The man laughed. “ _ After  _ your studies.” _

 

_ On the night long forgotten, Tony would dream of turquoise wings in clever irises and roaring lions clawing the heart from his chest. _

  
  



End file.
